


The Disappearance of Danny Hebert

by stabbyunicorn



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Cinematic, Dark, Ensemble Cast, F/F, Gen, Mystery, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24717142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stabbyunicorn/pseuds/stabbyunicorn
Summary: Several months ago, Taylor went out and tried to be a hero. She ended up gaining a friend, instead: Rachel. Now, Taylor’s an independent and Rachel’s turned hero. And Rachel’s got a girlfriend: the illustrious Victoria Dallon.But now Danny’s disappeared, and so has Angelica, one of Rachel’s dogs. Director Piggot and and Principal Blackwell try to protect Taylor as she investigates her father’s disappearance. Victoria helps Rachel look into her missing dog. And Emma Barnes, Taylor’s worst enemy, runs her own investigation into her “Uncle Danny’s” disappearance.
Relationships: Principal Blackwell/Emily Piggot, Victoria Dallon | Glory Girl | Antares/Rachel Lindt | Bitch | Hellhound
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	1. The Assembly at Winslow High

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I can’t promise I’ll be entirely canon-accurate—my memory & wiki searches aren’t quite good enough for that, and sometimes I may deviate for the sake of story—but I’m going to do my best to make sure everything crucial to the mystery aspect, whether canon-diverging or not, is written in the story. Again, I can’t promise perfection, but I’ll do my best.

# 

Chapter Ⅰ

## 

The Assembly at Winslow High

A fly sat on a windowsill in the empty hall. The vents clicked and hummed with the heater’s dull rumble, and the soft murmurs of voices whispered from beneath the classroom door. A voice grew louder, proud and full of cheer, until the classroom door flung open and out stepped the grinning Mr. Gladly, his students close behind.

“If we’re quick we can grab a bite before the big show!” Mr. Gladly said. His patronizing excitement might have been more contagious had the high schoolers trailing him been eight years old rather than sixteen. “Wouldn’t want to go hungry!”

A voice called up the hall after the students, and several hung back to listen.

“Miss Hebert!”

Tall, brown-haired, khakis, and a white button-up; his outfit looked in need of a jacket, but he carried only a thin leather briefcase. An even taller woman accompanied him; she looked as if she’d rather be anywhere else.

“Miss Hebert!” he called again.

The students who’d paused looked down the hall at a classmate who hadn’t. A murmur passed through the crowd: “Taylor…” “What did she do?” “Is it about her father?” “Taylor…” “Taylor?” “Taylor!”

Taylor Hebert stopped, eyes closed, jaw clenched.

“Detective Lambert,” she answered, eyes still shut, as he approached from behind her.

She was not quite as tall as Lambert, but held herself as if she were, with her back straight and her eyes narrowed, chin set and lips drawn tight. Her hand twitched as if to restrain herself from spinning around and punching him in the face.

“Miss Hebert, Grace and I were hoping to ask you a few questions,” he said, though Taylor still hadn’t turned to look at him. “Please, we’ve commandeered a room, if you’ll just follow us.”

They guided her down the hall and past door after nondescript door, then around a corner and into another hallway equally indistinct; each step took them further from the Assembly and closer to the Administration Wing, until they stopped at a small office opposite the vending machines, and disappeared behind its wooden door.

For a few gentle moments, the hallway’s silence lay undisturbed by all but the drink machine’s hum. Then two heroes rounded the corner chatting noisily, and the quiet was shattered.

“How can you even tell these hallways apart?” asked Victoria Dallon of New Wave, Brockton Bay’s very own independent hero family. She was dressed in her white and gold Glory Girl costume. Her white cape and blonde hair trailed behind her as she hovered down the hall.

“Smell, maybe,” said Rachel Lindt, a rough-looking Ward who’d refused to go by a ‘cape name’ even at the urging of the Wards’ PR department. She was followed by Brutus and Judas, two large dogs. Every few seconds, she’d reach back to each and check they were still there; each time, the dogs briefly grew before returning to their original size.

“You _would_ say that, Rachel.”

Rachel glanced down to her dogs. “Not what I meant,” she said. “Should ask Taylor.”

“How is Taylor?” Victoria’s arm brushed against Rachel’s shoulder. “You told her Mom’d help, right? We can cover the costs. We know some who’d do it pro bono.”

“Dunno.”

“You haven’t—”

“She doesn’t say much.”

Victoria smiled wryly, and her eyes flicked to Rachel. Again, her arm brushed Rachel’s shoulder, and this time, Rachel leaned back into Victoria’s touch.

“But you told her we’d help, right?” Victoria said. “I mean, we could at _least_ give her somewhere to stay. Better with us than—”

“Piggot said no.”

“But why?”

“Dunno.”

“She never trusts us.”

Rachel shrugged. Victoria chewed at her lip, then sighed. She looked to the wall to her left, where dozens of papers and posters were tacked to a cork board. The largest poster was covered with clipart of heroes fighting villains, and in a cartoonish font was printed: _Meet Brockton’s Young Heroes! Wards and New Wave discuss powers and their origins. Friday, November 18th, in the Stansfield Assembly Hall! Attendance mandatory._

“Have you done these things before?” Victoria asked. “What do you think it’ll be like?”

“No,” Rachel grunted. “Shouldn’t be here.”

“Sure you should! You’ve been a great Ward!”

“Should be finding Angelica.” Rachel gripped the fur around Brutus’s neck. He swelled—

“I’ll help you,” Victoria said. “I’ll help you find her.”

They passed a patch of wall where an ugly shade of white had been ineptly painted over graffiti; it appeared pale green beneath the hallway’s fluorescent lights.

Victoria’s feet alit upon the floor. Her hand nudged Rachel’s.

“I mean it, Rachel,” she added, voice low.

A few steps later they passed a gray metal door with a dirty old sign, and Rachel accepted Victoria’s hand in her own and gave it a small squeeze.

The two sprung apart as another girl barreled ‘round the corner, a giant bag slung across her shoulders.

“’lo Soph,” Rachel said. Victoria elbowed her.

Sophia Hess barely grunted, but as she passed her angry face softened. Her eyes lingered on Rachel for several seconds, then she tore them away.

“Take your next left,” she called after them as they disappeared around a corner. “It’s faster!”

Sophia approached the gray metal door. Beneath the layer of grime the sign’s words were barely legible: _Construction Workers Only. Hardhats Required._

She leaned against the door. Flicked her eyes up and down the hall: empty. She shifted. Her body turned to a dark, shadowy smoke and passed smoothly through the door.

Though her clothing and jewelry had gone with her, a small ant had not. It fell to the ground; bounced once; landed; righted itself. It puttered around for a few seconds; walked in a circle as if to search for the girl who’d turned to vapor. Finally, began to inch away from the door, until at last it was squashed by a red sneaker.

Three sharp knocks; a jiggle of the handle; it was locked, but—

With a click the lock disengaged. The handle turned, and slowly, the door opened.

“Told you I knew her,” Emma Barnes proudly proclaimed. Her red sneakers stepped through the doorway, followed by a pair in light blue. “Madison, meet Shadow Stalker.”

Through the door was a cavernous, half-finished space: the school’s unfinished East Wing. Where dozens of classrooms should have been, instead stood only wood framing; few of the framed walls had so much as wiring or plumbing, much less drywall, and the girls could see all the way from the door to both corners at the Wing’s end.

Everything was coated in a layer of dust marred only by footprints and an inky, moldy grime. In place of windows were thin sheets of plastic, some with tears near where they’d been nailed to the wood.

“This place is so _cool_ ,” Madison Clements enthused.

“It’s gross,” said Emma.

“ _You’re_ so cool!” Madison told Sophia. “Are you the one who controls, like, spiders and insects and stuff?”

Sophia was no longer Sophia. She’d changed into her black hooded Shadow Stalker attire, face hidden behind her full-face black mask, and crossbow slung across her back.

She snorted.

“That’s Recluse,” she said, her voice muffled through the mask. “I turn to shadow.”

“Oh! Right, like your name! That makes sense!” Madison said. “Will Recluse be here, too?”

“She… She didn’t want to be a Ward,” Sophia said. “C’mon. We’ll be late.”

She strode out the unfinished East Wing; Madison jogged to keep up.

“Can we fight sometime?” Madison asked. “I’ve been practicing! My friend’s been teaching me!”

“Your friend’s barely taught you anything.”

“How would _you_ know?”

A pause, then—

“Emma told me.”

“Hey, uh—” Emma interjected. “How’re— how’s everything?”

“The usual.” Sophia scoffed. “Too busy with bullshit like this. Fucking Scion fan club.”

“Uh… shouldn’t we be going the other way?” Madison asked. “And what’s wrong with Scion?”

Emma sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Need a drink,” Sophia said. “I’m already late, anyway. And there’s nothing _wrong_ with Scion. He’s just an overrated hunk of gold who flies around pretending he’s a hero. He’s bullshit.”

“Like you’d turn him away if he tried to defend _our_ city,” Emma said. “You should be grateful!”

“Grateful.” Sophia snorted. “Did you suddenly find proof he’s the one passing out powers?”

Sophia stopped at the drink machine and pressed a button.

“Got a dollar?”

The door behind them slammed open, and the three girls jumped; its faux wood rattled unpleasantly against the metal doorstop, but the noise was soon submerged as Taylor charged out the office, shouting.

“You’re the ones who took him! How would _I_ know where—”

“Miss Hebert, if you could just tell us if he had any hiding places, or anywhere he might have kept documents, passwords—”

“No! You took him and—”

“Miss Hebert! Miss Hebert, please, we want to help, but we need _something_. His bank records, his files— if you know _anything_ …”

But Taylor stormed down the hall, and Detective Lambert groaned.

“What’s _her_ problem?” Madison muttered.

“Shut up,” said Emma.

Emma shoved a dollar coin at Sophia, then rushed after Taylor.

“Taylor! Taylor, wait!”

Taylor spun, her body tense and breaths heavy, and she glared at Emma through puffy red eyes.

“Yes, Emma, I’ve been crying myself to sleep all week! Go tell all your little _friends_ about crybaby Taylor.”

“Taylor… Taylor, I just wanted to— do you know anything? About Uncle Danny?”

Taylor stepped towards Emma, her shoulders raised and teeth bared; Emma took a step back.

 _“Uncle?”_ Taylor hissed. “He’s not your _uncle,_ you piece of—”

“Taylor, Dad knows a bunch of lawyers, he could—”

“He’s _missing_.”

“Missing? What— Missing? How could he be missing?”

“Ask _them!_ ” Taylor pointed at the detectives, then spun around and continued her charge down the hall.

Emma ran after her.

“Taylor, I— You could stay with us.”

“Why the _hell_ would I want to stay with _you?_ ”

“That was just— We were— They were only _jokes_ , Taylor! Besides, we stopped!”

“Blackwell _made_ you stop.”

“Still, staying with us would _have_ to be better than staying with _her_.”

“Fuck off, Emma.”

“Tayl—”

“Say my name _one_ more time and I’ll talk to Blackwell again.” Taylor gestured at the Administration Wing a few yards ahead. “I have _every_ opportunity.”

Taylor paused her stride beside the Administration Wing’s doors. She cocked her head as if she could hear what lay behind them, then abruptly continued down the hall barely a second before the doors opened and one of Principal Blackwell’s assistants rushed out.

Emma’s expensive heels clacked noisily as she chased after Taylor. The sounds echoed into the Administration Wing through its slowly closing doors. Inside, the receptionist’s desk sat empty; the only sign of anyone’s presence was the quiet murmur of conversation from Principal Blackwell’s office.

The conversation grew louder, and the office door clicked open. PRT Director Emily Piggot stepped out; one hand patted down her blue suit, the other brushed her blond bob-cut out of her face.

“I share your concern, Diane, but it’s a police matter,” Emily said. “It’s out of my purview.”

“But Emily…” Principal Diane Blackwell’s voice lowered as she stepped from her office into the deserted reception area. The harsh fluorescent lights brought out her face’s distinguished wrinkles. “Surely you can—”

“It’d be breaking a dozen PRT regs, and a few laws, too. I’m sorry, Di, but my hands are tied.”

“ _You’re_ the one who told me to help her.”

“I told you to _do your job._ ” Emily winced at her own words.

“My _job_ didn’t entail taking her in.”

“Oh, you want to trust the _Dallons_ with her? Hm? I suppose you haven’t met Panacea, then?”

“If she joined the Wards—”

“And just _how_ would you have us make Taylor join?” Emily closed her eyes and released a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight, Diane. It’s— is it so bad, Di? Is Taylor?”

“She’s…” Diane’s jaw clenched. “Well. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. I’ll have to give her back, eventually, once all this is sorted out. Her father… well, he’ll do better for her, I expect.”

Emily’s face softened. Her hand reached up for Diane’s shoulder.

“You’re doing well,” Emily said. Diane began to protest, but— “No, really. It’s a tough situation. You’re doing what you can. And I… I’ll do the same.”

“So you’ll—”

“I said I’ll do what I _can_ , Diane.” Emily’s phone buzzed. She unclasped it from her belt holster, and winced at whatever she saw. “Henry… _Stealing_ them? I said ‘ask’ for the files, I didn’t say— Oh…”

Diane coughed. Emily tore her eyes from the phone, but did not place it back into its holster.

“Co— Come on, Di,” she said. Her eyes pulled back to the phone still held in her hand. “We can talk about it more af— after dinner.”

“But you wanted to play that game of yours—”

“Hm? Oh, uh… during dinner, then?”

Again, Emily stared down at her phone. The neutral expression on her face was too schooled… Diane craned her neck; she could just see the image, small though it was on the phone’s screen: a body, something dark and shiny snaking up its arm and into its—

“ _No_ ,” Diane stated, adamantly. She turned away with a shiver and led them out from the quiet Administration Wing and into the reverberant hall. “No. Dinner’s for—”

But before Diane could say just what dinner was for, she was accosted by Detective Lambert.

“Principal!” Lambert rushed after them. “Director. I’m Detective Lambert. Did your receptionist tell you I’d be speaking with Miss Hebert? She’s been very reticent about where her father might have kept his—”

“My apologies, Ambert—” “It’s Lambert.” “—we’re needed in the Assembly for the Ward presentation. I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“It’ll only take a moment. I just need some clarity on why _you_ would be the one to take in the girl—”

“One moment too many.” Diane’s voice was stern. “Set up an appointment.”

“Mrs. Blackwell—”

“ _Principal_ Blackwell,” Emily interrupted harshly.

“Principal, look—”

“An _appointment_ , Ambert.” Diane pulled open a door and held it for Emily, but when Detective Lambert tried to follow, Diane shut the door in his face.

“Ambert?” Emily said, eyebrow raised.

“Sorry about that,” Diane said, as they headed into the Assembly Hall’s backstage. She sighed. “Should I have talked with him? Maybe he’d have let something slip.”

“Doubtful,” Emily said.

Diane raised her chin as a student from the Audio Club clipped a mic to her shirt collar with inexpert hands. Rather than try to find somewhere to clip the transmitter, he wisely handed it to Diane and moved on to Emily.

“Is New Wave here?” Emily asked him.

“I, uh…”

“Elizabeth!” Diane called across the room. “Lizzie! Is New Wave here?”

“Yes, yes, of course they are.” Elizabeth said breathlessly, rushing up. “ _You’re_ the late ones. Come on, you’re up.”

“We’re not _that_ late.” Diane checked her watch and winced.

“You try saying that when _you’ve_ had to keep the terrible little monsters occupied,” Elizabeth grumbled.

“Now, Lizzie…”

“I’ll stop calling them monsters when they stop earning it,” Elizabeth said. She shoved Diane towards the stage, and with a smirk she lowered her voice. “Now go; I’ll get your girlfriend ready.”

“Liz!”

“Just be glad I waited to turn on your mic.” Elizabeth pressed a button on a remote. “And done!”

Elizabeth turned to Emily, and Diane finally stepped out onto what passed for a stage and faced the crowd of already-bored students.

“Hello, Winslow!”

She was greeted by halfhearted applause.

“For the past three decades, ever since the Golden God himself popped into existence, Parahumans have lived amongst us. Villains, Heroes— they have been agents of good and bad alike. Here to talk about some of the good is Director of our local chapter of the PRT. Afterwards, you’ll get to meet the Wards, and, for the very first time at one of these gatherings, Brockton Bay’s very own _New Wave_ as well!

“Please welcome the Director of the Parahuman Response Team East-North-East, Emily Piggot!”

Again the crowd applauded, just as tepid as before. Few of them paid much attention as Emily stepped out, but slowly, as their lazy claps died out, most begrudgingly regarded the stage.

Near the back of the hall, Taylor dabbed at her eyes with a wadded-up bit of toilet paper. It had begun to disintegrate in her hands, too saturated by tears; she flung it to the ground. She reached her hand after it as if to pick it up, then stopped, stood, and walked to the exit.

Mrs. Knott nearly stopped her, but after a look at her face, she stepped aside and let her pass.

As soon as Taylor was out she fell against the wall and took a deep, shaky breath.

From her pocket she pulled a business card.

_Detective Lambert. Precinct 137._

“’lo.”

Rachel leaned against the wall beside Taylor, and her dogs laid down at her feet.

“You should be inside,” Taylor said.

Rachel shrugged.

“Don’t like the noise,” she said. “You okay?”

Taylor shook her head.

“S’kay. Normal.”

“He’s gone.” Taylor’s voice was harsh, raw. “Dad. He’s missing.”

Rachel blinked. Her head tilted in confusion.

“Thought he was in jail.”

“They lost him,” Taylor said. “How do you lose a fucking prisoner?”

“He escape?”

“Not likely,” Taylor said. “They didn’t even let me visit him before he…”

“Fuckers. How long?”

“Days. All week. I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. They didn’t _fucking_ tell me.”

“Fuckers.”

“They think… They think he was spying,” Taylor said. “ _Spying_. Can you even— They asked me where he would’ve kept— they didn’t say what. Bank records, maybe? Don’t they have warrants for that shit? They didn’t even say who we was supposed to be spying _on._ ”

“Don’t think he could spy.” Rachel shook her head. “Walks too loud.”

“But he— we’ve had more money, and he’s been all… I don’t know. He said it was a new contract, but what if… What if it’s something bad?”

Rachel shrugged.

“Then fuck him.”

“He’s still my dad,” Taylor said. “Rachel, I have to know. Whatever he was involved in… I have to know.”

She lifted herself from the wall and turned to face Rachel. She stared her directly in the eyes, face now blank, cold.

“Can I trust you?”

Slowly, Rachel nodded; her pupils never left Taylor’s.

Taylor leaned in. Lowered her voice.

“I have to see what they have on him,” she said. “I have to know.”

Again, Rachel slowly nodded.

“I have to know what they have,” Taylor reiterated. “I’m going to _take_ it. I’m going to go to the precinct and _take_ it.”


	2. Lights at Melancholy Thicket

# 

Chapter Ⅱ

## 

Lights at Melancholy Thicket

“I’ll be by at seven,” Director Emily Piggot said as she stepped into her El Camino. Her hand brushed across the door’s faded yellow paint. “For real, this time.”

Principal Diane Blackwell chuckled. “I won’t hold my breath.”

“I’m sorry, Diane, but—”

“No, I understand.” Diane placed her hand upon the car door as if to close it. “Just remember, if you’re not on time, we won’t have time for your game. Tolkien-inspired, isn’t it?”

“Diane, I’ll do my best—”

“Go! Go!” Diane laughed. “Before your heroes find some way to tear the city apart!”

“Better them than the villains,” Emily said. “Least that’s what I tell myself.

Diane shut the door, and with a little wave and one last mouthed _sorry_ , Emily was off, and Diane was left alone in the parking lot.

The wind rustled through leaves back by the school’s unfinished East Wing. Some leaves shook loose… fluttered to the grass… sank slowly into the mud…

Diane sharply spun on her heel and strode towards the school’s main entrance. She pulled her phone from her pocket; a few taps on the screen, then she held the device to her ear and—

“I told you to wait for me.” Her voice was sharp. “Where are you?”

Diane’s fist clenched as Taylor spoke from the other end.

“No,” Diane said. “You aren’t— I said _no_ , Taylor! You are to stay put right where you are, right now. Understood?”

Taylor’s response was sharp and brisk, and though not quite decipherable, still clearly rude.

“Taylor, my _job_ is to look after you. _Both_ of my jobs. Taylor, you can’t keep— If you hang up— Shit!”

The other was silent. Diane raised the phone as if to throw it to the ground; she caught herself just in time.

She dialed another number, then—

“Emily? No, I— It’s Taylor,” Diane said. “No. She’s fine, I think she’s fine. She left. No, I don’t know.”

Emily demanded something, but—

“What do you want me to say, Emily?” Diane continued her walk to the school, her lethargic footsteps slowly giving way to haste. “I— Yes, I know. Me too.”

A sharp sound—perhaps a laugh—was followed by a few short words.

“Yes.” Diane reached the entrance and rested a hand upon the wooden frame of the school’s main doors. The paint had chipped away, revealing through its cracks the gray wood beneath. “Yes, that’s one way to put it. Every ‘fucking’ time. Look, Emily… She’s going to do something she shouldn’t. No— No, if I knew I would have already— Yes, just… Just do what you can. Put the word out. Have your capes keep an eye out. I don’t want her to be one of the ones who—”

Diane sighed, and her face slackened; the wrinkles around her mouth spread like a spiderweb of grooves.

“It’s— what are we up to, now? Fifteen? Sixteen? I don’t want her to be one of them. Not like that. Not like that. Their _noses_ , Emily, can you even imagine? Going up their— And that’s _if_ we find her… If she doesn’t just…”

Emily said something, and with another sigh, Diane agreed:

“Yes,” she said. “Just… disappear.”

* * *

“Disappear?” Mr. Barnes’s disdain was too loud even for his large BMW sedan. “You can’t just _disappear_ from police custody!”

“Well, Taylor said that’s what happened,” said Emma, his daughter, as if it were settled. “And, like, there were detectives at school today, too, so…”

At this, Mr. Barnes peered up at his rearview mirror; in it was the image of the three girls sitting in his back seat.

“Detectives? Who?” He spotted himself in the mirror, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. It was too short to stay put, and popped back out a moment later. He scowled.

“Lambert and someone,” Sophia said. She’d been unlucky enough to end up in the middle seat.

“Jordan?” Mr. Barnes asked. “Grace? Gracie? Grace Jordan?”

“Maybe?” Emma said. “Taylor didn’t seem to like them much.”

“Her taste’s as good as ever, I see,” Alan mused.

The three girls shared a glance. Mr. Barnes’s eyes narrowed, but his glance back up to the mirror was aborted as a car swerved into the lane ahead of them. He slammed his palm against the horn—

_Honk!_

After a few seconds, the horn’s obnoxious sound stopped, and once the ringing had cleared—

“Look, we were thinking…” Emma looked meaningfully at Madison, then back to her father. “I mean, Uncle Danny vanished from jail, right? I thought, I mean, we thought, that maybe we could, uh…”

“Can we visit?” The words tumbled from Madison as if she’d been holding them in for hours.

Mr. Barnes frowned. He raised a brow as he tried to understand.

“Visit? Visit… who?”

“The jail.” Madison’s face lit up as she spoke. “I’ve always wanted to see—”

Sophia guffawed a short, sharp laugh.

“Course you did,” Sophia said. “It’s nothing special, Maz.”

“Tell me!” Madison said. “Are the locks electronic? And can you see the motors that open the gates? They _are_ motorized, right? There have to be gears, and—”

“Well, it’s a little different here, I think—”

“Sophia, should you be talking about…” Mr. Barnes’s eyes flicked back to the rearview mirror.

“It’s alright,” Sophia said. “Madison figured it out. Eventually. Only took her an hour to recognize my voice.”

“That’s not fair!” Madison said. “You deepen it.”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, you totally do,” Emma said.

“Girls!”

“Sorry, Mr. Barnes,” Madison said. “But the jail—you have to know someone who would let us take a look around, right?”

Mr. Barnes’s hands squeezed the steering wheel tightly. Then, with a resigned sigh, he pulled the car over to the shoulder of the not-quite-urban, not-quite-suburban road.

“You won’t learn anything the police haven’t,” he warned them.

“So you _do_ know someone?”

Another heavy sigh, but—

“Yes,” Mr. Barnes admitted. “Yes, I do.”

“Then—”

“I’ll have to call your parents, Sophia, Madison,” he said. “If they don’t—”

“They won’t care,” Sophia said.

“Mine’ll be happy,” said Madison. “Just tell them it’s educational, or that you’re scaring me straight.”

“You’re not going to find anything,” he cautioned them again.

Still, he pulled into traffic, and a few moments later into a U-turn. He shook his head; his eyes closed for a second longer than might have been safe, and all the while behind him the girls’ loud, excited chattering began to blend together, until all that remained was a cacophony of—

* * *

Silence.

Inside the train car was nothing but silence. No creature lurked behind the dilapidated seats; nothing moved in the many shadows. It was evident even through the layers of grime caked onto the car’s windows: it must have lain undisturbed for a decade or more…

Rachel sighed and pulled her face away from the plexiglass. She paid little notice to the layers of gunk and grime old and new that coated the rail yard.

“Nothing?” Victoria’s voice called from somewhere behind Rachel’s shoulder. The light shifted as she approached Rachel with hardly a sound.

“Hurt or dead.”

“Sorry?” Victoria stopped just behind Rachel. Her hand reached for a spot by Rachel’s waist where the ugly grime had marred her deep green coat, just to the side of her heavy, utilitarian backpack—gray with blue stripes.

“If she’s here, she’s hurt or dead.” Rachel turned to meet Victoria’s gaze. Her eyes darted down to the hand that hovered inches from her waist; with a half-swallow of discomfort, she looked away, down the aisle in which they stood between the long columns of train cars that stretched into the distance.

“It— You said she liked it here, though…”

“She’d’ve heard us.” Rachel leaned a hand against the dirty car. “Would’ve whined, at least. And I tried the beacon. Nothing.”

She fiddled with a fine gold chain draped around her neck; from it hung a pendant with several small golden buttons around its rim. Rachel pressed one. Nothing.

“If you called the others—”

“Don’t want them to disappear, too.” Rachel’s voice had turned listless; empty. “Doesn’t matter. Not really, I guess.”

Victoria reached for Rachel and pulled her close; her hands dug into Rachel’s soft green coat. She reached up her hand—

Rachel’s phone buzzed. Her attention fell from Victoria to the screen. She pulled away from Victoria and stepped between a pair of abandoned train cars; her fingers tapped furiously upon the keyboard.

Its bright light illuminated her face as well as it could, but the space between the cars was too dark, and the corrugated metal too marred by the ugly gunk permeating the rail yard, mottled and rough and disturbingly damp. Instead, only the occasional patch of deep green reflected off the rare spot of clean metal; it shifted as Rachel moved and wrote.

Rachel growled. Tapped a few words into her phone. Growled again as still more words appeared in response.

“Is everything… okay?” Victoria asked. She tentatively moved into the gap with Rachel; her face hovered a foot over Rachel’s shoulder.

“Taylor,” Rachel said. “She’s doing something stupid.”

“What’s sh—”

“They don’t know,” Rachel said.

“But you do?” Victoria asked. “You know what she’s going to try to do?”

“Yeah,” Rachel said. “Maybe. Don’t know.”

“Quite a range,” Victoria quipped, but her face quickly fell back to serious. “What _do_ you know? Is it the kind of thing you should, uh… share with people? Maybe they could—”

“Police,” Rachel said. “She wants to know things. Get their files.”

Victoria blinked and moved out of the gap.

“Is she… breaking in?” Victoria asked. Rachel only shrugged. “Does she even know how they store—”

“Prolly not.”

“Then how does she plan to—”

“Dunno.”

Rachel turned away again.

“Probably be fine,” Rachel said. “She’s usually fine…”

“As long as she doesn’t try to fight Lung again.”

“Don’t even joke.”

“I don’t know…” Victoria gently reached for Rachel, and turned her around until the two were face to face. “Last time ended up alright… You a Ward… Meeting me…”

Rachel began to smile, but her lips seemed to forget halfway, and so too did her eyes forget to keep looking into Victoria’s.

“She’ll be okay,” Victoria said. She looked over her shoulder and peered up along the column of cars. “Look, let’s go up the hill. Maybe we’ll see something—”

“Melancholy Thicket.”

“What?”

“Up the hill. Melancholy Thicket,” Rachel said. “It’s what I call it.”

Victoria blinked.

“I’m just not used to you using words like, uh… either of those, I guess.”

“I’m not stupid,” Rachel grunted. She pushed past Victoria and out from the space between the cars.

“No. I mean, of course not. Of course— Yeah.”

Victoria’s eyes searched Rachel for something but came up empty; Rachel swung her backpack from over her shoulder and began to dig through it, seemingly unaware of Victoria’s gaze.

“Hold these.”

Victoria shook herself and took the offered rope, knife, and first-aid pack. Finally, Rachel extracted a pair of palm-sized flashlights and stuffed everything else back into her bag.

“Thicket’s dark in winter.” Rachel gestured across the hill. “Sun’s over there.”

Victoria looked at the flashlights, then to Rachel’s bag.

“Your bag has outside pockets.”

“Dog treats,” Rachel said. “Need them quickly.”

“Flashlights, though…”

Rachel shrugged. She handed Victoria one of the flashlights. On its side, Rachel’s name was laser-etched in a flowing, cursive font.

“There’s a spot.” Rachel pulled her coat’s hood over her head. “Other side of the Thicket. Can see everything. Let’s go.”

Rachel began to walk, but—

“I really didn’t mean…” Victoria started. She trailed off as Rachel turned back to her. She fumbled for words for several seconds until Rachel took pity with a quirk of her lips:

“I know.”

* * *

“I don’t know,” said Detective Lambert. His fingers fiddled with a flimsy plastic water bottle; it should have creaked and crackled, but all its sound was lost beneath the roar of the police station’s crowded, open area.

“Are we supposed to arrest her, or bring her in, or call someone—a”

“I _don’t know_ ,” Detective Lambert repeated. Above them, fluorescent lights flickered; had it not been for the loud station chatter, there might have been a hum.

“Did you _ask_?” His partner Grace briefly glanced up from her phone. “Did you?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Of course not,” his partner placated him.

“Look, all they said was to look out for the girl, and to check the house,” Lambert said. He reached for an open packet of kale chips, and brushed away a couple ants that had strayed too close. “Like she’d be at the house. If she’s there, they can find her themselves.”

Grace snorted, but she was again focused on her phone. A few taps—

Her eyebrows shot up. A slow grin spread across her face, but—

“They’ll want us out there,” Detective Lambert said around a mouthful of kale. He washed it down with the last of his water. “A long evening.”

“Got a date, gotta go,” Grace said. “Cover for me?”

“What? Just now? Again?”

“That _is_ how dating goes, you know,” Grace said. Then, eying her partner— “Then again, maybe you don’t.”

“Shut up,” Lambert muttered. He pitched the water bottle across the room. It missed the recycle bin by a yard. “Fine, fine, I’ll do it. Rail yard, you think? She’s gotta be looking for her father. Hey, if I find her, think she’ll finally answer a question?”

“Don’t hold your breath.” Grace was already walking away. “Check the house, anyway.”

“Fine, but _after_ the rail yard,” Lambert called after her. “Call it a hunch.”

She showed no signs of hearing him. He sighed and collapsed into his chair. He allowed the momentum to spin him around once, then halfway round again, then he caught his foot upon the small set of cabinets by his desk’s left side.

From within he withdrew a pen and a small notebook. Finally, he stood and walked away. Behind him, the cabinet door closed—

* * *

The cabinet door closed with a thump.

Footsteps; a boiling kettle. Ceramic linked against granite, and the whistling stopped; water poured, tea steeped, and long fingers tightly gripped the ceramic mug.

“You sure you don’t…” Diane Blackwell said as her mug clanked against the wooden kitchen table.

“No, no,” Emily Piggot cut her off. She shook her head with a small smile; the ends of her blonde bob brushed her face. “More of a coffee person, you know.”

“And hot cocoa,” Diane murmured, but Emily heard her.

“Do you have some?” Her face brightened slightly. “I can find it.”

“I was going to get some, Emily, I’m sorry. I forgot.”

Emily brushed her off. She leaned back in her chair; her hands gripped the table’s edge. After a moment—

“What makes you so sure?” Emily said.

“So sure? So sure Taylor’s doing something stupid?”

Emily nodded.

“I can tell. I can _always_ tell.”

Emily rolled her eyes. Again, her blonde bob brushed against her glasses. “Just like you could tell when those girls harassed—”

“Barnes’s father seemed respectable enough.” Diane leaned flat against her chair. “I had to give them the benefit of the—”

“Over a _year_ of harassment. The girl _triggered,_ Diane. Don’t you know what that means?”

“I know—”

“Intense, even—” “I said I know—” “— _extreme_ trauma, Diane. You don’t think you get powers for free, do you? Capes are messed up for a reason, Diane. _That’s what happened in your school._ ”

Diane glared down into her mug.

“I didn’t know.” Her voice was quiet. “I thought… They seemed like decent enough girls. And Taylor… She seemed… She was a problem. Making trouble. I didn’t… I didn’t know.”

“No.” Emily sighed. “I suppose you didn’t.”

“It was _your_ Ward,” Diane muttered.

“For what, four months?” Emily protested. “But yes. Yes, it was. I suppose I didn’t know, either.”

Diane lifted the mug to her lips. After a deep inhale, she took a sip of her tea.

“I tried,” Diane said. “I mean, I _am_ trying. Have been trying, since I found out, but…”

“I know.” Emily winced and looked off to her left. “I know.”

She took a deep breath. Exhaled.

“I—” Emily frowned. “She’ll be okay, Diane.”

Diane sighed. Nodded.

“Stay?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “Yes, I’ll stay.”

“You’re sure you—”

“Henry’ll send everything I need,” Emily said. “And even more I don’t. I’ll be fine. I’ll stay.”

And she said nothing more.

Instead, the two simply sat. The round wooden table stood between them, and the kitchen stretched around them, and as the sun set they were left alone in a dark, quiet room.

* * *

The heavy key slid into the lock with a practiced smoothness that was undone by the heavy clanking of the mechanism. It was followed by a series of clangs as a keycard tapped a key reader. The reader beeped green, and the motorized door opener slid to barred gate aside. Prison guard Steven Hastly stepped through, Mr. Barnes and the three girls behind him.

“You’re sure this is safe?” Mr. Barnes asked.

“Oughta be safe enough,” Hastly reassured Mr. Barnes in his monotonous drawl. “I’m with ya.”

“Yes, but—”

“Now, I wouldn’t let ya get into any trouble.” Hastly adjusted his tie. “Come on, just through this gate, then another set or two… It’s a bit of a maze in here, but it used to be a— ah, what was it? Another building of some sort…”

Two gates, a handful of prisoners, and a few dozen cells later, they arrived in an awkwardly narrow hallway. Its left side was lined with cells lit by harsh fluorescent lights.

They stopped at the third cell. It sat across from an old wooden door; the light above flickered unpleasantly. Inside were two men: one old, gray, and snoring on his bunk. The other—

“So is he the one—”

“The young one, yeah,” Hastly said. “Brickens. Was cellmates with Hebert for a day or two. Good luck getting anything outa him, though. Not right in the head anymore. Was part of the ABB til ol’ Bakuda tested a mind-distorting bomb on him. Of course, now she’s…”

Hastly kept on talking, and Mr. Barnes kept nodding along. His other guests approached the cell, their eyes scanning intently, if haphazardly.

“Looks… normal, I guess?” Emma glanced warily at the cell’s younger inhabitant. He was seated against the far wall, his eyes drifting here and there, his face a mottled mess of ugly purple bruises. “Did he say he’s ABB?”

“Does it look normal?” Madison asked, sickly earnest. She ran her fingers over the cell’s metal bars, and studied the mechanism that operated it with an enraptured grin.

“Not really,” Sophia said. “The floor’s too dirty. I mean, usually the inmates have to clean, you know?”

“How do you—” Madison abruptly stopped. “Oh, right… Sorry, it’s not— I mean, obviously, places like this are— It’s just, the doors and locks and things are all so _cool_.”

“As far as I know, the cell doors are normal.” Sophia rolled her eyes.

Emma grunted, as if answering some question neither Madison nor Sophia had asked. Her eyes were still on the young, former ABB member. The sound of an ocean wave crashing upon the shore, then—

“Think Danny gave him those bruises?” Emma asked.

“Probably from the explosion,” Sophia said. “There’s burns, too.”

“Oh.” Emma’s voice fell quiet. “But he would’ve.”

“I— huh?” Sophia said. “Wait, did Danny beat someone up for you, too?”

She eyed Emma and weighed her up—or, perhaps, weighed up Danny—but Emma shook her head dismissively.

“No, he just—” Emma wiped absent-mindedly at her face, slightly smearing her lipstick. “It doesn’t matter. It was the— stupid.”

Sophia shook her head. Unable to decide what to say to Emma, she instead aimed a question at the cell’s younger occupant.

“ _Do_ you have to clean?”

“Clean,” he muttered. “It wouldn’t— we can’t clean it. You know? Because the lights.”

“The lights?” Emma asked.

Hastly chose that moment to interject, his face consumed by a beaming grin.

“Ah yes, a nice little mystery we had there, let me tell you!” He bounced on his feet. “The lights, the lights. Well, we thought it was just him bein’ off, you know what I mean? But some of the other inmates saw them, too. Well, we finally figured it out! Come on, come on!”

He rushed down the hall, and beckoned for Mr. Barnes and the girls to follow.

They followed Hastly down the hall and around a corner to a small, locked room. A sticker of a rose was stuck to the door frame at a child’s eye level.

“A school!” Hastly said.

“A— a school?”

“That’s right,” Hastly confirmed. “The building was a school. See, the sticker… Knew I’d remember. Brockton needed a new jail in a hurry after what Marquis did to the last one.”

Hastly fiddled with the door, then entered and—

“See!” He dug in a basket. “A light!”

He held aloft a standard-issue Ward flashlight. It was beat up, with dings here and there down the handle, and a giant scuff right near the bottom.

“How—”

“And look at the name, all fancy and engraved!” He beamed. “Shadow Stalker! She’s a hero, you know!”

Sophia blinked. Her head tilted and eyes narrowed as if trying to remember something. Finally, hesitantly—

“She might have lost one, I guess?” Sophia suggested, though she seemed doubtful.

Hastly’s sharp laugh echoed out the room and down the hall.

“She don’t seem the type,” he said. “No, I think if that _is_ a Ward flashlight, your boy Danny was their supplier. He was in shipping, you know.”

Emma frowned. She began to protest, only for her father to interrupt her:

“How’d it get _here,_ though?” Mr. Barnes asked.

“He smuggled it in somehow.” Hastly shrugged. “Quite clever, really. No idea how he managed it. Course, all bets are off where capes are involved, and ol’ Danny wasn’t saying, was he?”

“Capes were involved?”

Hastly blinked.

“Well, yes,” he said. “At least I figure, what with the PRT. They had their armor an’ all. Big honkin’ ol’ backpacks, funny weapons—that foam stuff, I reckon—the whole kit and caboodle. Didn’t you know?”

At the group’s blank look, he continued.

“Two nights ago. The PRT. That’s who took him.”

* * *

Detective Grace Bryce quietly stepped from one of the station’s side exits and let the door close gently behind her. She glanced up and down the alley, but saw no one.

“Do you have it?” a voice whispered.

A figure stepped from behind a dumpster a few yards down. She was dressed in a silky, charcoal gray costume. Her face was framed by her long, curly hair, and her mask’s eyes glinted yellow in the dark dusk light.

“On a thumb drive, as arranged,” Grace said. “How does this work? Do you have the money?”

“Do I need the money?” The figure stepped forward.

Grace blinked and shook her head.

“Do you—”

But before Grace could finish, her words were drowned beneath the roaring buzz of a swarm of insects. The swarm emerged from every nook and cranny of the building, until the sky was flooded and—

“You—” Grace stopped herself. “But you can’t— You’re supposed to be a hero!”

“And _you’re_ supposed to be a cop,” the figure snarled. She took another step forward.

Grace reached for her gun, but found a writhing mass of bees. She yanked her hand away with a shriek.

“Then again, I hear the strangest things about cops in this town… Maybe you’re like the rest. Here, ‘on a date,’ rather than— what was it? Were you supposed to arrest someone? Bring them in? Call someone? Tell me, why does your partner put up with you? Do you have something on him?”

“Recluse, look, I’m not—”

“Give it to me.”

“I—”

Grace backed against the station’s brick wall. The chattering of the insects grew louder than ever. She jerked away as roach legs touched the back of her neck; she frantically tried to swat them away.

By the time she looked up again, Recluse was staring down at her, inches from her face.

“Give the thumb drive to me, _now_ ,” Recluse repeated. “You don’t want to know what I could do to you. My bugs wouldn’t even have to touch you… The things I know about you, Grace… Swarms _are_ useful, aren’t they?”

“I– you—”

“Now.”

“Fine, fine, I— Look, there isn’t much, okay?” Grace held forth the drive; her hand shook. “So don’t— don’t think I’m hiding something—”

“I can tell if you are,” Recluse said. “I can always tell.”

Grace eyed Recluse warily, as if uncertain whether she were bluffing.

“It’s just— just a money trail that doesn’t make sense,” Grace said. “A disappearance here and there. People complaining about— about sounds. Lights. Things like that. And all we found is this guy—Herbert, Hebert, something—he was out by the rail yard, and—”

“And where can I find _him?_ ” Recluse demanded, towering over Grace.

“I don’t— He disappeared! Everything we know’s on the drive! All of it! We barely started looking; his daughter knows _something,_ but we couldn’t get a thing out of her. Talk to _her_ , if you can find her!”

Recluse’s amber eyes glared down at Grace. The swarm chattered in time with Grace’s quick breathing, until finally—

“The rail yard?”

“Yes, yes! He was lying in the mud— there’d been reports of bright yellow light shining into the sky; he must’ve had a searchlight somewhere—”

“Why would he be _there_?”

“I told you, I don’t _know_!” Grace said. “Look, check the house. They told us to check the house!”

Several seconds passed. The insects grew louder, louder—

They fell silent.

“I’ll be in touch.”

* * *

Twin beams of flashlight shone paths that had been cut through the densely-packed trees. The rustle of leaves and branches grew louder, then quick and hurried—

“Blood!”

“I see it!”

Their voices approached. Soon, they’d reach the clearing, and—

“The trees are getting— oh!”

Victoria stopped cold as she emerged from the thicket, her flashlight’s beam flaring out before her.

“Victoria, what—”

But then Rachel, too, ran out of words.

Victoria was the first to move. She floated into the clearing, towards the steep rocky slope that led down the hill, and knelt.

Ribbons. Ribbons of meat and bone, cleanly shredded, spiraling, twisting and turning and disgusting. And in the mud, just by Victoria’s knee, lay a large, fur-covered head.

Rachel’s hand shook. The beam from her flashlight made streaks upon the muddy ground.

She stilled. Swallowed. Her fist clenched. Her face stayed eerily blank.

“Rachel…”

“It’s what we expected,” Rachel said, but her voice cracked. “Hurt or dead.”

“I’m so—”

“It’s— it doesn’t matter.” Rachel’s mouth pulled tight. “She— Some cape must’ve—”

Rachel stopped.

“Rachel?”

Rachel aimed her flashlight at the ground just beneath Angelica’s remains, and the beam lit the area around them like daylight.

But the ground that should have been the green of grass instead was black, not scorched and burnt, but coated in a slimy, dark muck.

“It’s… what is it?”

Rachel tore her eyes from Angelica and followed the trail of grunge up to the hill’s steep slope. Victoria, knees inch-deep in the dark slime, reached up to steady Rachel as she peered over the edge and boosted her flashlight’s power once, then again, until finally her eyes could follow the trail of muck down the hill…

Below them stretched the rail yard. Its every surface was coated in inky black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Juff, moode, and Fwee for helping beta (not just this chapter, but the whole story).
> 
> And I’m sorry this happened to Angelica.


	3. Bang Bang

A distant, shimmering light lit the hand at a shallow angle, casting it in sharp silhouette. The hand was nearly submerged in an inky mud; the pages of the small notebook held loosely in its grasp lay sodden, dripping.

There was only the merest hint of sound, unnaturally muted as if deep in water: the eerie silent cacophony pulsed a half second behind the light’s shimmer, its every swell bringing with it a small gentle pull on the hand.

The mud glinted wet and glossy. It snaked up the arm and twisted about the white button-up shirt sleeve: elbow, bicep, shoulder, and across the barely-breathing chest, until finally, up the chin and around the mouth and to—

His nose.

The trail of inky mud led into Detective Lambert’s nose.

Beneath the nose his mouth lay closed, serene and at peace; and above his eyes lay open, reflecting the distant shimmering light, staring unblinking at some distant point.

Muddy ground stretched out around him, flanked on one side by train cars, the other by a chain link fence, reaching each way until—

The light blinked off.

Black.

  


  


  


  


  


* * *

  


  


  


  


  


# 

Chapter Ⅲ

## 

Bang Bang

  


  


  


  


  


* * *

  


  


  


  


  


“Look, I’m telling you, there’s nothing!” Sophia said, reclined on a mustard yellow chair in Emma’s room, holding her phone up as if it could answer any question. “He’s not there!”

Madison rolled her eyes, not that anyone could see her. In front of her on Emma’s desk sat an old wind-up clock, half-deconstructed, gears exposed; its gears moved in a delicate dance as it ticked along.

“Maybe you don’t have access?” Emma asked from the bed, laying atop the neatly-made covers, laptop on her lap.

“There’d still be _something,_ ” Sophia said. “But there’s nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Not one mention of Danny except— well, nothing recent,” Sophia said.

Madison tore her gaze away from the intricate movements of the clockwork’s gears and peered at Sophia over her shoulder, eyebrows raised.

“Except?”

“Nothing,” Sophia said. “Nothing important. I mean, it’s, uh… because of what _we_ did. You know?”

“Oh,” said Madison, disappointed. “But still, he must have _some_ power, if the PRT took him. The lights had to have been him, right?”

“It’d be awesome,” Emma said. “If Uncle Danny had a power? Bet he’d get something cool, like, I don’t know… like teleportation, or decapitation—off with someone’s head like _that_ —”

She snapped her fingers.

“Yeah, no,” Sophia said, laughing. “ _He_ doesn’t have a power.”

“He could have triggered in jail!” Emma said, setting her laptop aside. “He could have—”

“Maybe he’s got pocket dimensions!” Madison said. “Then he could’ve smuggled in _anything_ —”

“If he triggered in jail, he wouldn’t have been able to smuggle anything in,” Sophia said.

“Not unless he could teleport!”

“If he could teleport, he wouldn’t need pocket dimensions,” Emma said.

“But why would he bring a _flashlight?_ ” Madison asked. “Besides, if he could teleport, they wouldn’t have been able to hold him. Not at the County Jail, anyway.”

“He _doesn’t_ have a power,” Sophia said. “Like— no.”

“If he did,” Emma said, “then there might be something at his house.”

“He doesn’t have a power,” Sophia said, again.

“We could go there,” Madison said.

“He doesn’t— go there?” Sophia said. “You mean, to his house?”

“Yeah,” Madison said.

“I mean, I _guess_ there could be something there,” Sophia said. “But the detectives would’ve found anything interesting.”

“Like they got the flashlight?” Madison said.

“Let’s do it.”

Emma leapt from the bed; she tripped on the rug, but quickly righted herself.

“Just a little tumble,” she muttered. Louder, she continued, “Yeah, let’s go to Uncle Danny’s.”

Sophia shook her head. “Your parents will hear us.”

“They’ll be asleep any moment. We can silence the alarm,” Emma said. “They won’t notice a thing. They sleep with white noise.”

“Fine,” Sophia said. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

The oven’s LED clock switched from 6:59 to 7:00, and at the table Diane Blackwell sighed.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” Emily said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to look after her.”

Diane exhaled quickly in some form of laugh that wasn’t quite decipherable. Her eyes did not leave her plate— a slice of pizza, a bite missing, maybe two; the box sat between them, open, still full but for the one slice.

“I should have taken her—” Emily continued. This time, Diane’s scoff was a clear, derisive laugh.

“Don’t,” Diane snapped. “You can’t just—” She glanced back at the oven clock. “Never mind.”

Emily looked down to her phone, held in her hands where her plate should be, her face impassive but for a small twitch that might have been trying for a frown.

Diane’s long fingers flexed. She reached for her plate, then suddenly changed her mind and slammed her hand down flat on the table. Her plate’s clanking and rattling were quickly drowned out by her own voice.

“Why do you think you can _say_ things like that?” Diane said, words tumbling out and nearly colliding with one another. “Clearly, I _care._ It’s done. You can’t undo that. Now that I do— You can’t _say_ things like that, Emily.”

“I—”

“What, do you not know what it’s like?” Diane said. “To _care_ about the people you—”

“You aren’t _suggesting_ —”

“What am I supposed to think?” Diane said. “You sit there like you think I shouldn’t care, like _you_ don’t care—”

“It’s called ‘compartmentalization,’ Diane,” Emily said. “You should try it.”

“You _do_ think I shouldn’t care.”

“That’s not what compartmentalization means,” Emily said impatiently, looking back down to her phone and tapping something. Again her face fell neutral but for a small frown-like twitch.

“It’s what _you_ mean.”

“No.” Emily still didn’t look up.

“You act like—”

“Of course I fucking care!” Emily snapped, head swinging up to glare at Diane. “About my Wards, about Taylor—”

“You don’t _know_ Taylor.”

“Fine, I don’t,” said Emily. “I don’t know her, and I hardly care about her. Is that what you want to hear?”

Diane looked to the oven again, only to jump as something clattered and slid against the table. Emily’s phone— Diane looked as if she couldn’t quite tell what to make of it.

“Except I keep refreshing,” Emily said. “Still nothing, by the way. Not one mention of ‘Recluse’ or ‘Hebert’ in the PRT database in the last twenty four hours. Everything in the _police_ database is about her father. Henry says he’s called each station individually; still nothing.”

The refrigerator’s compressor turned on, and for a moment, neither spoke.

“It’s my job to care, Diane,” Emily said, finally. “Like you said: my Ward is as guilty as your students. I care.”

Her phone’s screen turned off. Its black rectangle of glass shone against the polished wood, the glaring image of the ceiling fan’s three lights competing with the reflection of Diane’s two eyes…

The bulbs seemed to grow larger and larger, consuming everything until—

* * *

Three bright bulbs lit the front doors of the Brockton Downtown Library, casting sharp shadows through the frame’s three ancient layers of peeling paint—each a slightly different shade of blue—and down to the wood beneath. The library had been a mansion, once, stuffed with ornate decor that the city had been too apathetic to remove, but likewise too apathetic to maintain, leaving it to slowly decay and rot.

The door creaked as Taylor pulled it open and stepped into the small foyer. The few working lights in the chandelier above lent the room a dim orange glow that shimmered with her every step as she swept past the front desk, then to the left and around the corner, and finally down a flight of stairs to where the library’s four computers were kept.

She passed the machines and their square little table, where the metal chair legs had left the hardwood more scratch than surface, and instead walked across the threadbare carpet and to the small copy machine.

Thumb drive in. A few taps on the screens. The mechanical hum of the laser printer. A page— she snatched it up, only to frown. Another— the paper crumpled in her grip. One more— she slammed her fist down on the machine’s plastic surface with a—

* * *

Bang! Her kick sent the plastic garbage bin toppling into the street and skidding across the asphalt. The street light overhead was out, leaving Taylor backlit by the library’s front lights, a dozen sheets of paper in her hands.

“They had nothing, _nothing_ — a ‘tipster’ they said, they actually used that word. Who uses that word? And the tipster left a hotline—no, I didn’t call it, I’m not stupid. No, they didn’t, either. They hardly did anything. Hardly anything. Three fucking weeks and all they have to show for it—”

Rachel’s voice said something—

“No, nothing. ‘Call from Hastly at County Jail—they used an at sign—Danny disappeared.’ And they didn’t even call the jail. They know _nothing!_ They say embezzlement, but they don’t have—”

Again, Rachel said something, just two or three words.

“No,” Taylor said, with what might have been a laugh had it not been so breathy and quick.

Incredulity from the phone; Taylor fumbled with her papers—

“No. No bank records, nothing, _nothing!_ Nothing about the ‘spying,’ nothing about— about _anything,_ just ‘Ask daughter for bank pw,’ question mark. I’m assuming they mean password. Yeah.”

Taylor’s jaw flexed; the papers crumpled in her hands. A deep breath, face not quite still; narrowed eyes looked to the right…

“There’s nothing.”

Nothing from the other end.

“Nothing,” Taylor said, again.

Still nothing.

“Rachel, I need— could you please—” Taylor said, but her jaw kept tightening until she couldn’t speak. A heavy swallow, then— “Could you search the PRT database? For Dad, I mean? See if… uh, anything comes up?”

A car drove by. It swerved around the garbage bin and swiped it with its fender; the bin skidded once more and clattered against the curb.

“Rachel, are you there?”

Rachel’s voice said something, hardly anything more than a word.

“ _Lights?_ ” Taylor repeated, puzzled. “What do you—”

“Victoria? She— Is she with you?” Taylor said. “Rachel, are you…”

Loud words from the phone— “Victoria, what are you— Oh…”

“Rachel, are you listening to me? Rachel? Rachel!”

After a long pause, Rachel answered with two words.

“You _guess?_ What’s that supposed to mean?” Taylor said. “Victori— You— What, your girlfriend’s more important than my _dad_?”

Taylor’s face was contorted in rage— then, abruptly, the rage vanished, and the quiet night air was disturbed by a soft buzzing that seemed to emanate from everywhere.

“Fuck, Rachel, I didn’t, I— I… Rachel? Rachel, I’m sorry…

“Rachel? Are you there?

“Rachel?”

* * *

“Rachel, please— I’m sorry! Please say something… Rachel?”

Taylor’s voice echoed from the phone’s speaker, unsteady and distant even inches away, suffocated beneath the oppressive quiet that permeated the night air.

The phone lay half-submerged a few inches from Rachel’s arm. Every second or two her arm spasmed as if to yank itself away, each time landing back in the dark mud, her every muscle falling loose at once.

Only her hand touched the mud’s serene, constant waves, her coat and its hood insulating her from any further contact. But still it had touched her, and still, it seemed, that had been enough. With each swell of the inky waves it advanced… up her forearm… around her elbow… over her shoulder…

Beside Rachel lay Victoria, shoulder an inch from Rachel’s half-submerged hand, one leg bent oddly to her side as if she’d fallen from kneeling. The mud had reached her face. It was nearly past her lips…

A low noise peeked through the oppressive silence, growing louder, louder— crashing, crunching, shaking; the sound of trees collapsing against trees met with a staticky hum that seemed to bubble and fizz.

The ground shook—it should have been louder—it shook, and then—

A two-foot tree trunk slammed into the ground just beside Rachel. Mud splattered against her face. She jerked her arm harder, flopping it about like water would a limp hose, until finally—finally—Rachel yanked her arm and hand free from the mud and onto her stomach and _screamed._ Not in terror, not in victory. Only a noise, loud and raw, shoving through the thick air.

She scrambled to her feet, careful not to touch the ground—

“Victoria?” she asked. “Victoria, get— Shit!”

Rachel looked around for something that could help her. She only found the light. Bright, pulsating, golden light, like windows into the sun constantly sliding open and shut, approaching, _consuming_ , destroying, slicing through trees and the night alike, slicing in twisting turning spiraling slices, closer and closer with its grinding and humming and crunching—

Her hands shaking, she reached for Victoria’s shirt, careful not to touch the mud. She grabbed and _pulled_ , lifting Victoria from the mud and onto her feet, but still Victoria was limp—

Then, beneath the glaring, flickering golden light, she saw the tendril of mud dangling from Victoria’s arm, unbroken, an umbilical line that followed even as Rachel dragged Victoria further away, chasing her, and at its end—

It stopped, just short of Victoria’s nose. Then, the mud began to flow another direction: along Victoria’s shirt, starkly lit black on flickering white, inching down towards Rachel’s hands.

Rachel tried to step further away, but her leg caught on something— No, something had caught _her,_ ensnaring her leg, twisting around her boot. She pulled, yanked, _tore_ herself away, but nothing could—

Black.

The bright light _stopped,_ and with it, the crunching humming stopped as well. And with it, the sounds of the night returned: the sound of wind through trees; of autumn leaves rustling against each other; of a car in the distance.

“Ra— Rachel?”

Rachel blinked; her eyes struggled to readjust to the dark.

“Victoria! Are you—”

“It… it was all…” Victoria’s eyes seemed to dart everywhere but nowhere. “It was like nothing mattered. Just… nothing. Just… apathy.”

“Victoria… we need to go,” Rachel said. “ _Now._ Before it starts again. The ‘Apathy.’”

Victoria’s eyes stilled, locking onto Rachel’s. She nodded, pulled Rachel close, and lifted them both a foot into the air.

She pulled her head away to look again into Rachel’s eyes. A shaky look towards the ground, then back to Rachel, and then—

“Yes,” Rachel said quietly. “I know what ‘apathy’ means.”

Victoria smiled weakly, then looked back to the ground. Rachel followed her gaze. Chunks of tree; fibrous panel-like like unpainted drywall; bits of metal: a rod, some copper coils; half a backpack—not one of theirs, but perhaps scooped up and brought with as the strange light had moved.

“Head itches.” Victoria was still dazed. “Above my neck.”

“Mine, too.”

“The… _It,_ ” Victoria said. “The— Yeah, the Apathy. There’s a pattern. I mean, I think. Like, um… waves.”

Rachel looked down. Indeed, beneath the debris—just visible under the moonlight—was a pattern of frozen waves. Most flowed away, off across the train yard, but some—some near them—flowed instead towards the forest, towards where the light had been.

She looked out across the rail yard, and to the chain link fence on its other side, just barely visible beneath a nearby row of lights.

Victoria glanced at her.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Madison’s eye peered through the lock, tilting, searching…

“Honestly, if you just let me—” Sophia’s exasperated voice came from somewhere in the dark over Madison’s shoulder, only to cut off as Madison withdrew a bobby pin from her hair and inserted it into the grimy lock.

Sophia huffed. Madison’s eyes did not stray from the lock; her fingers moved the halves of the pin in tiny, inscrutable motions.

Suddenly, she frowned.

“What?” Emma said.

“Honestly, I could just phase—”

Madison reached for the round door handle and turned. The door opened, creaking and shuddering like an old joint, revealing a kitchen lit in dull orange by a corner lamp’s single working bulb.

“Nice!” Emma said, stepping inside, smiling fondly, her eyes closing as she breathed in the scent: dust, yes, but also honey, artificial, from the air freshener plugged in just beside her.

“It wasn’t me,” Madison said, shrugging and following Emma. “It was already unlocked.”

“I don’t like this…” Sophia said, but she, too, entered the house and looked around the kitchen. Flies hovered around a week’s worth of old dishes that lay out on the table and counter.

“Do they clean?” Sophia eyed at a stack of glasses marred by a bubbly brown film— hot chocolate, perhaps. She flicked away a fly that tried to land on her and glanced at it with narrowed eyes.

Emma’s lips pulled tight. “He’d do fine if he didn’t have to take care of Taylor.”

She reached for the tiled countertop. It, too, was covered in a dark film, but unlike the glasses, the film was not brown; instead, it was inky black arranged in striated rings that emanated from the sink.

Emma dragged her fingers across it; they wiped clear lines across the tile.

“I don’t like this.” Madison stood by the sink; she stared into the drain…

“Yeah, like I said,” Sophia said, still hardly more than a foot inside. “We should—”

“It looks familiar,” Madison said. “Doesn’t it? I mean, _that_ stuff.”

She pointed to Emma, who’d raised her fingers up before her eyes to examine the thick layer of black grime that coated them.

“How is it _everywhere?_ ” Emma reached for it again. “Is it coming from—”

“I don’t think we should touch it,” Sophia said.

Emma lifted her hand and waved her grime-covered digits.

“No, I mean— Yeah!” Madison said. “The jail!”

“I knew it!” Sophia whispered. She lowered her face until it was inches from the countertop. Her eyes followed the rings until they reached the sink, then down the counter to the floor. “I _knew_ those floors were too dirty, I fucking _told_ you.”

Emma looked to Sophia, then back to the countertop. The lines seemed to form gigantic rings that emanated from the hall.

“It has to be Uncle Danny,” said Emma. “But if—”

“Yeah, it’s definitely coming from somewhere in here,” Madison said. She lit her phone flashlight and directed it down the hall, but it hardly added any light beyond the corner lamp’s dim orange bulb. She took a step towards the hall, but—

“No, no, I mean…” Emma said, “I mean, it’s like… I’ve seen this somewhere else, I think. Not just the jail.”

“Oh…”

“Sophia?” Emma asked. “What—”

“Oh!” Madison said. “All of us! We’ve all seen it! And _where_ have we all been? Yeah? Aside from our houses. Where?”

Emma exhaled. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “I can’t remember if it’s always been like that. I mean, it could have been new. Like, maybe it got in through the holes in the plastic sheets, or something—”

“Or maybe it got _out_ through—”

Bang!

The back door slammed open and rattled the door frame.

Emma, Madison, and Sophia spun around. In the doorway, lit by the orange lamplight, stood Taylor.

“I should call the police,” she said.

Emma, Madison, and Sophia glanced at each other. Finally, Emma looked Taylor in the eye.

“Taylor!” she said, nervously. “We— Well, we were just—”

“Get out.”

“Look, Taylor!” Emma said. “The PRT took Danny, and we think this stuff—”

“Out!” Taylor shouted.

Even the flies stopped buzzing. Emma’s arm, nearly pointing at the counter, fell.

Then, tentatively, as if dipping her toe in ice-cold water, Emma moved towards the door. The other two followed. As she passed Taylor, she opened her mouth— But then she thought better of it. And soon—

Taylor was alone.

She strode across the kitchen to the little desk in the corner, on which sat a computer. A few clicks later, she’d opened Brockton Bay Central Bank’s website.

Forgot password… Security questions… School: Brockton University. First pet: Charles III. Favorite teacher: Mr. Fleetman.

The transaction history was largely uninteresting. A hundred or two paid here, a thousand in salary received there. And then—

Five thousand. Eight thousand. Each bore the same title: ‘Account #1527: MANTECH.’

Searched for the company name: manufacturing, buyout, the Docks. She dug through the filing cabinet; flung papers across the floor—

Suddenly, she stilled. Her head tilted as if listening for something she could only faintly hear.

She stood; her chair skidded out behind her—

* * *

Gravel skidded across the sea of inky black sludge and clattered against the chain link fence.

“ManTech?” Rachel said, looking at the sign adorning the fence.

“Manufacturing Technologies, I think,” Victoria said. “But I thought they went under.”

The two stood on the dry gravel, a row of train cars to their backs. A foot ahead of them the sludge sat tranquil, with only a small, stationary ripple—thin lines across the shiny black—reaching through the fence and out into the night.

“Sign’s new,” Rachel said.

Victoria swallowed, eying the dark sea. “Let’s go.”

She pulled on Rachel’s arm, but Rachel hardly budged.

“Rachel?”

“Um…”

Rachel raised her arm, pointing parallel with the tracks towards something—

“What is— Is that—”

But Rachel had already begun to run along the gravel, rushing towards the shape laid out on the ground just a few hundred feet away.

“Oh my God,” Victoria said, retching.

They’d found Detective Lambert.

* * *

The long shadows of the kitchen’s lone light lit the frozen waves of grime with pinpricks of shiny orange as they swept in from the small living room.

Taylor stepped into the room, blinking once or twice until her eyes adjusted. There was something there in the shadow, around the corner: a tall figure with thinning dark hair.

“Dad?”

He was sprawled across the couch, oddly still, legs at unnatural angles, one awkwardly propped on the coffee table. But—

Taylor stopped, already halfway to him.

One fly landed on the body, then another, and then a spider, too. They crawled over it, inspected it—

“But you’re not…” Taylor said.

Beep.

Beneath the coffee table. Phone, wires, and a clump of something. And it had just beeped.

* * *

“It’s five minutes late,” Emma said, kicking at the enclosed bus stop’s wall.

“Five minutes isn’t bad.”

“Still not here, though,” Sophia said.

Bang!

The bus stop’s wall rattled as noisily as it had at Emma’s kick.

“What—”

“Shit,” Sophia said, looking towards where a column of flame was reaching into the sky a few houses down.

Without warning, she took off at a run.

The other two couldn’t keep pace with her. One house, another, another, and then—

Taylor’s house burned. The fire crackled and spat, its glow lighting Sophia’s skin.

A wheezing cough from across the street shook Sophia from her daze. A figure: it lay in the grass, a mass of burns and scrapes and broken bones.

_Taylor._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long for this chapter. It’s edited a bit more lightly than the first two, I’m afraid; I’m not able to dedicate 4–6 hours editing each chapter at the moment. On the plus side, having givn up on the indepth edts [sic], I might manage to publish chapters more quickly.
> 
> On the plus side, it more closely resembles what the story’s betas saw when they read it. Thanks again to Juff, moode, and Fwee for helping beta (not just this chapter, but the whole story).


	4. Secrets, Secrets

# 

Chapter Ⅳ

## 

Secrets, Secrets

The fire truck pulled away, and Director Emily Piggot stood alone in the street, her coat collar turned up against the chill evening wind. Across the street, small flashlights scanned left and right through the rubble and debris with bright narrow beams that ducked and hid behind studs and bits of wall.

Behind Emily, a shadow moved through the dark.

“—rector? Ma’am?”

“What— yes?” Emily hardly bothered glance over her shoulder. “Sorry; yes, Henry? What is it?”

“They’re at the hospital.”

“The Dallons? Finally.”

“No…” Henry stepped up to stand at Emily’s left. He regarded the destroyed house with a small frown. “The girls. Parents say they’ll be at HQ by ten tomorrow.”

“Our headquarters?” Emily regarded Henry from the corner of her eye. “Or have the capes butted in again?”

“Ours, of course.” His short hair swung in the wind and he pulled his head down into his coat like a turtle. “I’ve booked rooms six, eight, and nine. Even got coffee and donuts and scheduled lunch… You know, I hope they try to ‘butt in.’ I’d love to smile in their faces as I tell them it’s not their ‘jurisdiction.’ Such a nice word, isn’t it? ‘Jurisdiction?’”

“And the Dallons?”

“Glory Girl’s calling in a body, Brandish says. One with the, uh… nose thing. They suggested tomorrow morning.”

Emily’s lip curled. “Glory Girl’s not the one we need. Isn’t that what they’re always asking? Where they’re needed? With how much we cover for them—you know Glory Girl didn’t even show at the assembly, today?”

“Technically, she _did_ show. She just left very, very early.”

“Well, if they can’t help us when we _need_ them, next time they ask us where to go we can tell them ‘up your ass.’”

“You want me to tell them _that_? Because if so, I don’t think—”

“You think up creative interpretations of my words every day,” Emily said. “Don’t tell me you’ve reached your limit. Be as diplomatic as you like, just get on the phone and get it done. She’s a sitting duck at that fucking hospital.”

“It might not have been meant for her,” Henry said, voice soft.

“Don’t be an idiot. Who else?”

“The police, I think,” Henry said. Emily turned to regard him, eyebrow raised, and he continued. “A detective was asked to check in on the house this evening.”

Emily frowned.

“Did _we_ ask them to—”

“They say we did. But _I_ didn’t.” Henry frowned. “I didn’t think she’d come here.”

Slowly, Emily nodded. But—

“Still,” she said. “Hard to be sure. Post a guard at the hospital, and get the Dallons there _now._ ”

Henry nodded. “I’ll call Rachel.”

* * *

Blue lights flashed off brown sneakers as they kicked to and fro out the side of the van; one undone pink lace clicked against the van’s metal frame.

Rachel’s hunched shoulders moved side to side in rhythm with her kicking legs as if music somehow played in her mind. But for all her movement, Rachel’s head remained oddly still; the flashing lights danced across her eyes as she stared intently at her phone.

“Manufacturing Technologies,” she muttered. “Bought by Dock Development Division five months ago…”

She looked up from her phone, and her feet and shoulders stilled.

A few dozen feet away, Victoria stood across from a Parahuman Response Team officer. Her animated gestures caught the bright searchlights the officers had brought, and although Victoria’s voice was inaudible, Rachel could still follow the conversation as Victoria’s hand moved: first to the ground and the Apathy consuming it; then up the hill to where the Apathy had nearly consumed _them_ ; and finally to the body that had not gotten away.

Rachel’s phone buzzed. She gave her head a shake, then answered—

“What?” She scowled at the reply. “Fine, ‘ _hello_.’ Happy?”

Her face loosened. She leapt from the van—she stumbled over her loose shoelace—and raced towards Victoria and the PRT officer.

“Victoria! Victoria, it’s—”

She trailed off. One PRT officer… another… another… They held strange devices—weapons? Tools? Long metal rods with strange shapes on their end, attached by cables to oversized backpacks with blue spheres set into their centers. One of the officers used theirs to poke and prod the Apathy, but there was no apparent reaction.

Amongst the officers stood Victoria, mouth open, stopped mid word.

Rachel swallowed. Again her eyes flicked to the officers; several were within earshot. “Victoria… We need to go. Need your sister.”

A PRT officer stepped forward. Her voice gurgled from behind her mask.

“Case takes priority,” the officer said.

An angry voice shouted from the phone; his words blended together as they left the small speaker. Rachel raised it back to her ear— “What?”

She glanced at the PRT officer, but where a badge should have been, instead was only velcro.

“Henry says we go,” Rachel told her.

“Henry?” the officer asked.

“Your boss’s admin,” Victoria said, slow and clear. Then— “Rachel, what happened?”

* * *

The chair’s plastic arm curved downwards until arm turned to leg, its textured center cracked and flaking, its shiny sides scratched and scuffed. The chair to its right was little better: same dull mauve fabric, seat stained so it looked permanently damp—by vomit or blood, it was hard to tell.

Another seat— a chip of plastic flicked off as bright pink fingernails tapped against its arm. The fingers twitched as a command warbled from an intercom and through the halls, nearly unintelligible; it interfered with itself as it bounced around corners.

“Stop it,” Madison hissed. She leaned forward to look past Emma and to Sophia. Sophia raised her middle finger, then resumed tapping the armrest.

“Stop,” Madison repeated.

“Fine.”

Between them, Emma had hardly moved. Her eyes stared ahead unblinking at the wall across from her: once-white paint; a waist-high rubber bumper; myriad scuffs and dents.

Metal chair legs screeched against linoleum. They settled directly across from Emma.

She jumped as her father sat.

“You…” But he seemed to run out of words. Hesitantly, he lifted his hand and rested it on Emma’s knee.

“I’m fine.” Emma’s eyes still hardly moved; still did not meet her father’s.

“Emma…” His finger gently traced across a scrape on her knee.

“I— it was just a little tumble,” Emma muttered. “I’m fine. Just… Just a little tumble.”

Madison had scooted as far from Emma and Alan as her narrow chair would allow. Her eyes darted to them nervously, then down to the hall door a little ways down outside which a PRT officer stood watch. On Emma’s other side, Sophia had fixed her stare onto the floor.

“Well,” Mr. Barnes said. “ _I’m_ not alright. And goodness knows Danny’d have a fit if he knew.”

“I wish he was here.” Emma’s voice was small and quiet. Her father’s hand gave hers a gentle squeeze. Madison shot her a quizzical glance, but before she could speak, Emma spoke again. “But he’d be in there, wouldn’t he?”

“Principal Blackwell’s in there,” Mr. Barnes struggled to hold his reassuring smile. “And the PRT are here, too.”

“Uncle Danny would be in there,” Emma said. “With her.”

“She’s not alone,” Mr. Barnes said. “Taylor’s not alone, Ems.”

“No,” Emma said, harshly. “He’d be in there. With _her._ ”

“Emma…”

“He— they wouldn’t let me in.”

Mr. Barnes took a deep, steadying breath. “Well…” He rocked forwards and back and licked his lips. “I don’t think she wants to see— Well, I don’t think she wants visitors, honey.”

“She doesn’t want to see _us,_ ” Sophia said. She kicked at her chair’s rounded metal leg.

Mr. Barnes winced. “Well…”

“We saved her,” Madison said.

“ _We_.” Sophia snorted. “We.”

“I was there, I called the—”

“Did _you_ feel her ribs crack, too?” Sophia asked. “Or was that just me?”

“At least I actually _managed_ to do _something_ —”

“I don’t think it matters,” Mr. Barnes said, voice raised. “I imagine she… she probably remembers the last time she was here. If she’s even awake. How they got her admitted so quickly…”

Madison fell back in her chair with a heavy sigh, and her head thumped against the wall. She looked down the hall; the flow of nurses and doctors was relentless. Outside the room down the hall, the PRT officer checked a nurse’s ID before allowing her inside.

Mr. Barnes’s voice reached her from somewhere over her shoulder.

“Your parents will arrive soon, Madison,” he said. “Sophia… You’ll stay at ours, tonight. Okay?”

Shakily, Sophia nodded.

Emma’s gaze dropped to the floor.

“I wish he was here.”

* * *

The blood pressure cuff groaned, and Principal Diane Blackwell’s eyes flicked up, only to fall back down to her phone. In the corner a PRT officer shifted her weight from her left foot to her right. A few moments later, the cuff hissed and let out its air; again Diane glanced up, but only for a moment; after, her eyes remained oddly still.

Something ticked in the background—a clock, perhaps. Beyond, there must have been a door; through it, the muffled, echoing sounds of the hallway poked their way inside.

The ticking was too slow for a clock.

Diane stood, and the heavy chair scraped against the floor behind her. The PRT officer leapt from the wall, only to settle upon seeing Diane stride across the room—nice for a hospital room, with only one bed and a small set of furniture—and to the en-suite bathroom.

Inside, a drop fell from the faucet. Diane jiggled the handle. Waited. The dripping seemed to stop.

She returned to her chair.

Another several moments of staring at her phone. The screen dimmed. She tapped. Screen woke. Her eyes remained stationary.

The door opened. Diane shook herself into a semblance of alertness.

The nurse read the monitors. Fiddled with the IV.

“When will she wake?” the PRT officer asked him.

“No time soon,” the nurse said. “I can call the doctor if you’d like.”

The officer nodded. The nurse left.

Taylor was so still.

She lay so peacefully in the hospital bed, perfectly centered, arms lying just so over the covers, hair flowing out around her head. The light shone on her face, but her eyes remained closed.

A mess of cables fed into machines—blood oxygen, blood pressure, oxygen tubes, IV. Beyond them stretched the linoleum tile for a few feet, until finally there was the chair, and in it Diane, still stationary.

Stillness…

The timbre of the noise outside changed. It grow louder, more contentious.

Someone shoved open the door—the pneumatic opener groaned—and stormed inside. The PRT officer leapt up again and raised her weapon—a strange looking gun, cannon-like, large and connected to a rather small canister at her side.

“They shouldn’t even be allowed to _be_ here, I don’t care what they’ve— Oh!” Victoria Dallon stopped short. “Uh, who are— Are you Principal Blackwell?”

“We met earlier today.” Diane scowled. “Briefly.”

The PRT officer let her weapon fall back to her side, but she did not lean back against the wall.

Rachel pushed her way past Victoria and to Taylor’s bed. She gripped Taylor’s shoulder; Taylor stirred, but didn’t wake.

Victoria shrugged at Diane, apologetic. “Faces, I can’t— never mind.” She shook her head. “Amy’s gonna fix Taylor.”

“Finally,” the PRT officer muttered.

“Hey, I don’t have to,” said Amy Dallon, Victoria’s sister. She wore her white _Panacea_ robe with its red crosses, her face half-covered by its scarf. She regarded first the PRT officer, then Taylor, each with equal quantities of distaste.

“This could have waited.”

“Amy!” Victoria exclaimed.

“Does she _look_ critical to you?” Amy demanded. “She can get in line with the rest. I—”

“Fuck that,” Rachel said. “Fix her.”

“I can’t just—”

“We need to speak with her,” the PRT officer said. “As soon as possible.”

Amy shook her head, but—

“She’s hurt. You can help,” Diane said. “That should be reason enough.”

“At least do what you can, Amy?” Victoria said. “Please?”

Amy glanced from the PRT officer to Blackwell to Rachel, and finally to Victoria, whose pleading eyes—

With an angry growl, Amy strode forward and roughly grabbed Taylor’s hand.

“Concussion. Can’t help there,” she said immediately. “Broken ribs. fine. They’ll be tender for awhile. Burnt skin— I’ll have to regrow it. Don’t have a lot to work with; she’s too thin. The skin will need breaking in. She’ll want to take it slow. Ask me again after I’ve slept and maybe I can do more. Bruising— I won’t bother with that. Scrapes… Cuts…”

With a sigh, Amy released Taylor’s hand.

“That’s all I’m doing. I’ll get my own ride home.”

She walked towards the door—

“When will she wake?” the PRT officer asked.

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Amy didn’t slow.

The door shut behind her, its opener hissing. For a moment, there were only the sounds of machines and the muffled noise from outside. Then—

“Sorry about her,” Victoria said. “She’s…” Victoria shrugged helplessly. “Yeah.”

“S’kay,” Rachel said. “She helped, in the end.”

“This time.”

A message sounded from the intercom outside, garbled through the door; a few moments later, the blood pressure cuff began to groan again, until, with a hiss, it released…

Victoria and Rachel found chairs. Sat.

Taylor was so still.

* * *

“Why were you at Taylor’s house?”

Sophia Hess looked up from the napkin and the half-eaten donut resting on it. She looked intently at Director Emily Piggot, eyes narrowed. Behind Emily, the early morning sun glared through the conference room’s floor to ceiling windows.

Beside Sophia, Alan Barnes sat with his hands crossed upon the wooden table’s glass top.

Finally, Sophia replied with a question of her own. “Why do you call her Taylor?”

Emily leaned forward, eyebrows raised, elbows on the table; her chair creaked.

“Is that not what you call her?”

* * *

“We—” Madison’s chair creaked as she shifted uneasily. “Why does it matter what we call her? I thought you wanted to know about the explosion.”

“Did you?” Emily asked; her eyes took in every detail of Madison’s face, from the chicken-pox scar on her cheek to the dimples by her lips.

“I—” Madison stopped short, again. “Do you have any _real_ questions?”

Emily sat back.

“Why were you at Taylor’s house?”

“We thought it would be fun,” Madison said, her voice monotonous, face neutral. She took a bite of the donut on the napkin in front of her, then selected another donut from the serving plate and sampled it as well.

“Was it?” Emily fiddled with the cuff of her blouse. Behind her, the sun had just begun to slip above the top of the windows. “Was it fun?”

* * *

“Miss Barnes?”

Emma fiddled with her scarf’s fringe. She rolled the green fabric between her fingers back and forth, back and forth—

“You have their written statements,” Alan said. The sun was now more or less overhead. “Do they _really_ need to—”

“I’d like to hear from them each directly, your daughter included.” Emily broke eye contact with Emma in exchange for Alan. She stared him down for several seconds, then returned to Emma and asked— “Miss Barnes?”

Emma shrugged. Her left leg bounced rapidly, and her foot tapped the carpeted floor. The donuts sat in a pile across from her, untouched.

“Are the two of you friends?” Emily tried.

Emma’s shoulders tensed. Her leg stilled. “No.”

“No?” Emily asked. “Never?”

“Like you don’t know,” Emma said. She glanced at her father, but he shrugged, apologetic.

Emily selected a donut and took a bite.

“Why were you at the house?” she asked again, her mouth full of donut. A crumb fell to the tabletop. Emily’s hand twitched as if to clean it, but she stopped herself. Emma’s face scrunched up in disgust; her eyes fixated upon the crumb.

“We saved her,” Emma said. “Does it matter _why_?”

“Does it?” Emily asked with a shrug. She took another bite. “What do you think?”

* * *

“We did what we did.” Madison shrugged. “Look, Emma just wanted to look around,” she said.

“For fun?” Emily raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.

Another shrug.

* * *

“She thought maybe we’d find something.” Sophia crossed her arms. “So yeah, we went. I tried to tell her the detectives would’ve—”

“Did you?” Emily asked, hands crossed patiently on the tabletop as she stared calmly at Sophia.

“Did— Um…” Sophia said. “What do you mean? I mean, yeah, I told her—”

“Did you find anything?”

Sophia paused. She bit her lip; her eyes darted to the side.

“Uh, no,” she said. She shrugged in a poor facsimile of indifference. “Nothing.”

* * *

Emma bit her lip and stared down at the napkin. A half-eaten donut lay upon, now dry and stale; beside it lay a small pile of neatly-gathered crumbs.

Her father huffed impatiently beside her, but was silenced by a look from Emily.

“If you aren’t friends,” Emily said, “why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t care about your ‘Uncle Danny?’”

“I don’t care about _her._ ” Emma spat the start of the word, but fell surprisingly gentle at its end, leaving the ‘er’ drawn out slightly too long.

“Emma…” Alan said, but Emily pushed ahead.

“Why do you care about Danny?”

Emma shrugged. A sound—the ocean, waves lapping at sand—it grew louder and louder, until a wave finally crashed upon shore and everything was underwater in a swirl of—

“Miss Barnes?”

Emma shook her head. She looked anywhere but Emily’s unbroken, intense gaze.

“Is he dead?” Emma asked.

“Dead?”

“Danny,” Emma said. “They said… The news said…”

Emma’s fingers reached again for her scarf; she squeezed the little clumps of thread at its ends…

“Nothing’s certain,” Emily said.

“He didn’t make the bomb.”

“We don’t know—”

“You do, you have to know, _you’re_ the ones who took—”

“We are _not_ the ones who took him,” Emily said, voice raised, face set in firm lines pulled taut. Then, with deliberate effort, she loosened her facial muscles. “I _will_ be following up with this Mr. Hastly, I assure you. I want answers, too. But to find them, I need to know the _whole_ picture: why you went to the house, what you found—It’s obvious you found _something…_

“I need to know the whole picture. Even the smallest detail. Even why you care about Danny.”

“I just do,” Emma muttered.

“You just do.”

“What, haven’t you ever cared about people?”

Emily’s lips pulled taut, her eyes narrowed—

But a door opened off to the side, and just like that, Emily broke her intense stare.

“What is it now, Henry?” she asked. “If you could give me just _ten minutes_ without Costa-Brown trying to—”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Henry’s voice echoed into the room. “She’s awake.”

The corners of Emily’s lips pulled back slightly. She nodded to herself, then—

“Good,” she said, standing. “Good. Tell Diane I’m on my way.”

“Can we—” Alan started, but before he could finish, the Director had left the room.

* * *

The sky was nearly clear— one cloud here, another there, the barest hint of color on each; the sun in the west nudged towards orange; it lit the rooftops with a soft glow.

“Depot of what?” Victoria dug her hands into her pockets. A column of steam rose into the air from a vent a few feet behind her.

“Knew you’d ask,” Rachel said. “Dunno. Just its name. ‘Dock Development Depot.’ ‘ManTech.’ Doesn’t need to make sense.”

Victoria let out a slow breath; it turned to fog as it left her.

“It’s gotta be them,” Victoria said. “Doesn’t it? The glowy-slicey thing chopping through the forest? The Apathy?”

“Prolly.”

“I… it scares me,” Victoria said. A breath, then— “I… it’s like I _want_ it to touch me. For it all to be so easy and nothing to matter… Like… I can’t stop thinking about it. About what if…”

Rachel’s hand reached for Victoria’s. Squeezed it.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. We don’t have to go back.”

“But Taylor—”

“Yeah.”

“If it’s them doing it, and we could stop them…” Victoria said. “We have to, right?”

Rachel looked into Victoria’s eyes. Held her gaze.

“If we used the dogs—”

“No good for stealth,” Rachel said. “But if we need ‘em…”

She touched her finger to the fine golden chain hanging upon her neck. Victoria’s eyes dipped to where the button-pendant would hang.

“Right…” Victoria nodded. “Beacon, right.”

“Yeah.”

Victoria shivered. Slowly, tentatively, Rachel reached over and pulled Victoria close.

“Got something else, too,” Rachel said.

“Mm?”

“You.”

* * *

“It doesn’t make sense,” Emily said with a scowl.

Taylor crossed her arms over her chest. She must have moved too quickly; the movement left her looking mildly sick. She scooted forwards until she was perched on the edge of the bed and her feet could reach the floor.

“I don’t think Emily’s doubting you, Taylor,” Diane said.

“No, no. Obviously not,” said Emily. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Taylor picked up her fork and poked at the jello in front of her on the awkwardly-placed table.

“Well, intimidation _might_ make sense, but if they’re willing to kill—”

“Have— have they killed?”

Emily didn’t answer. Taylor swallowed.

“Did they…” Taylor started. Her voice took an odd quality, cracking slightly as if the tense muscles of her jaw were struggling to hold it in place. “Did they kill Dad?”

A pause, then— “We don’t know,” Emily said. “All we know is what you saw, and to put it simply, what little we’ve dug up.”

“Is that what they wanted?” Taylor asked. “For me to find— For me to…”

Diane’s chair scraped across the floor as she scooted it closer, until she was sitting across Taylor. Awkwardly, she patted Taylor on the knee, arm stiffly outstretched, movement robotic.

“We don’t know,” Emily said, again.

“The police think Dad’s embezzling,” Taylor said. “Or taking bribes. No records or anything. A ‘tipster’ told them—they must’ve been government or something, because they left a hotline, not that the police ever called it—”

“They wouldn’t have,” Emily said. “Anyone could be on the other end—a Tinker, a Master. They could have sent it to us, though.”

“The tipster could know about me,” Taylor said. “About my, uh…”

The buzzing of insects filled the air.

“It’s how I knew to look in the living room. If they knew I’d find it, and only wanted _me_ to find it, it might make sense.”

“Doubtful,” Emily said. “They wouldn’t be able to anticipate you like that. Not _that_ reliably. You weren’t even the first on the scene. But if they wanted the _police_ to find it… They could confirm Danny dead.”

“But then, they wouldn’t do that unless he’s not—”

“ _You_ said it wasn’t him,” Emily said.

Taylor nodded and let out a shaky breath.

“If I could just go check his files—”

“Taylor,” Diane said. “How exactly do you know what the police think?”

* * *

“He’s taking forever,” Sophia said, banging her head against the wall at her back. “What does Militia want with him, anyway?”

Sophia sat on a bench just outside conference room eight. To her left Madison used her phone, to her right Emma stared over the sea of cubicles to the glass wall across them.

“What if we just… left?” Madison asked.

“To Winslow?” Sophia asked.

Emma stirred, drawing her attention away from the orange afternoon light streaming over the cubicles and to Sophia.

“Yes,” Emma said.

Sophia blinked. “We should ask for backup.”

“From the PRT?” Emma scoffed. “They’re the ones who took him.”

“There’s nothing in the files—”

“The ones you have _access_ to,” Emma said.

“Piggot said—”

“And you _believe_ her?” Emma asked. “No. No PRT.”

“Agreed,” Madison said.

Sophia scowled. She looked from Emma to Madison, then back to Emma.

“Fuck it,” she said. “Fine, no PRT. But you’re staying close to me.”

* * *

A loud hum filled the room; it swished and whooshed with the sound of knives through air.

The cement floor was lit by a bright golden light that refracted in strange patterns like light on the bottom of a pool: it shifted and shimmered, dimmed and brightened…

Cement floor stretched away; it reached further and further until it met an unfinished wall, and on past until it met the exterior. There should have been a window there; instead, it was boarded up and covered with plastic.

And just to the left, in a tendril that snaked back towards where the light had come, was the Apathy. With each thrum of the room’s loud hum, the Apathy pulsed and grew, and with each swell _something_ flowed back to the source in little waves.

An inch from the encroaching mass, just beside an empty bottle and a manual for an old toaster, lay a flag. It was curled in on itself, but the text was still recognizable:

“WELCOME WINSLOW HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 2015!”

The Apathy pulsed. It touched the flag.

The flag began to dissolve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Juff, moode, and Fwee for helping beta (not just this chapter, but the whole story).


	5. The Body

Refracting golden light peeked through the shadows cast by a dozen unfinished walls. The wood framing was black against the light that emanated from the far corner of Winslow’s unfinished wing, from which thrummed a staticky hum.

Feet scraped cement. A hushed whisper—

“Is that…”

“Never seen it,” Sophia answered Madison.

Emma stared at the floor’s pattern of dark shadows and shifting gold light. “It’s like… like we’re underwater…”

The water was nearly audible: waves lapping against shore, a crash— Emma jumped; Sophia had laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Closer?”

Emma nodded.

Their shadows lengthened as they walked, and merged with the dark lines cast by the wooden beams. And in the distance, swells of gold came less and less frequently, like a kaleidoscope turned ever more slowly… Shadow consumed them more and more until it seemed they’d been plunged permanently into the dark

Emma stopped. Scraped her feet against the cement loudly enough to rise above the staticky hum: wet; mushy.

“Sophia…”

Sophia grabbed a flashlight from her backpack’s front pocket. Then—

Inky black rippled in tiny waves flowing towards the glowing multicolored orb in the corner.

Emma stared at the glossy, inky mud as if it were an old friend. She reached towards it; knelt—

“Don’t!” Sophia said.

But Emma’s fingers had already graced it with a gentle touch. Sophia’s shoes scraped the ink against cement as she stepped towards Emma; the ink pulled away as if burned.

“Don’t?” Emma asked. She looked up at Sophia. Her every facial muscle had relaxed to its fullest, producing an empty, eerie gaze.

“You don’t know what it’ll do…” Sophia’s voice was quiet.

“Does it matter?”

Emma let herself slide down off her own legs and to the floor. But even that soon became too much effort, and she began to tilt over.

“No you don’t,” Madison growled. She grabbed Emma’s clean arm and heaved. But the ink had ensnared her friend within slimy tendrils which held strong against Madison’s muscles until, finally, Sophia pitched in, and between the both of them they pulled Emma loose and—

“Emma?” Madison asked. “Are you okay?”

“Em?” Sophia said. She shone her flashlight at Emma’s eyes.

Emma slapped the flashlight away and blinked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “It was just a little… Come on.”

“Emma, you just—”

“Come on!”

She headed for the light in the corner. They were a scant few yards away, now.

“Emma, I really think we should take a minute—”

“I really think you should shut up,” Emma said. “We’re close. I know we are. I can feel it— the water, it’s a sign.”

“Water?”

Emma pointed to the ground, where the golden light shifted and pulsed as if on the bottom of a pool.

“I don’t get it,” Madison said.

“Trust me,” Emma said. “It’s Uncle Danny. It has to be.”

She reached the end of what ought to have been a hall, terminated by one of the few walls that had actually been built. But although it had drywall, there were spots where one could see through: holes, sliced clean away in irregular patterns. Through them shone the refracting golden light.

Around the corner and through what would have been a door, and then—

A sphere, meters-wide, packed with a kaleidoscopic array of constantly-shifting windows into other worlds: hallway, cavern, office, concrete, golden light. Between them all, flashes of gray nothingness in which swam ghostly shapes.

And sometimes—every few seconds—the constant shifting of the kaleidoscope’s windows would catch and briefly stall upon an opening into a world—always the same world. It was hard to make out at first, but each time it caught, it seemed to catch for longer, and the image cleared.

A hall lined with lockers. Light filtered in through grimy glass doors at its end, and lit dozens of mounds of _something_ that lay on the floor like lumpy sacks of decomposing meat. They and every other surface, from the floors to the lockers to the ceiling, were all coated in the same, pulsing, inky black, with the uneven texture of mold on concrete.

Each time the kaleidoscopic collection of portals caught upon that world, the Apathy in that world thrummed. And around the girls, across Winslow’s never-finished wing, the Apathy in _their_ world thrummed with it, each pulse accompanied by a swelling hum like half a heartbeat:

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

  


  


  


  


  


* * *

  


  


  


  


# 

Chapter Ⅴ

## 

The Body

  


  


  


  


  


* * *

  


  


  


  


“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked,” Diane said. “Tell me, Taylor.”

The PRT officer in the corner shifted uneasily on her feet. Between her and the exit sat Piggot in an awkwardly-placed chair.

“Why?” Taylor demanded, jumping to her feet and swaying slightly. “Look, I just know, okay? The police aren’t the only ones with ‘tipsters.’”

“Your swarm?” Emily leaned forward in the large chair.

“Maybe.”

Diane shook her head. “Not _just_ your swarm…” she said. “You did something worse. Illegal. Didn’t you?”

Taylor bumped against the nightstand. Her eyes darted to Emily, then back to Diane.

“What?” Taylor said, shaking, perhaps as much from fatigue as emotion. “Gonna have your girlfriend arrest me?”

The buzz of insects began to fill the air; Emily raised her hands. “We’re not—”

The PRT officer in the corner of the room moved—just slightly, but still a movement—and raised her weapon by just a few inches. The fly on its tip leapt off—

“You gonna shoot me?” Taylor demanded.

“She’s not going to shoot you,” Emily said. “We’re not out to get you, Taylor. No need for paranoia—”

Taylor barked a laugh that turned into a cough.

“Really?” Taylor said. “Really. No need for ‘paranoia.’ Right. You— I don’t even know— What do I _say_ to that? I just got fucking _blown up_ , my dad might be _dead_ , and you’re trying to act like— like— like _I’m_ the one with a problem? Why am I even—”

“Taylor,” Diane said. She reached for Taylor; Taylor jerked away. “Taylor, please, lay down. You have to—”

Taylor took an unsteady step forward. Again Diane reached for her, but Taylor’s glare held her off.

“Where’s my dad?” Taylor asked, abrupt.

Diane blinked.

“I don’t—”

Taylor looked to Emily. “Where?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The PRT took him,” Taylor said. “Emma told me.”

Diane scoffed. “This _is_ the same girl who shoved you into a—”

“It’s not like she’s hard to read. Well, I guess she _was_ hard to read for _you,_ or maybe you just _wanted_ to believe her—”

“I’m sorry,” said Diane, cheeks drawn back tight and unsteady. “I’m sorry, Taylor. I don’t know what more I can say. I’m sorry.”

Taylor took in Diane: the wrinkles aside her lips and across her forehead; her stance, tall as she could bring herself yet braced; her eyes’ tiny movements, to and away from Taylor’s own.

Taylor could hardly decide where to look more than could Diane: floor, door, Diane, Emily, the PRT officer. “Don’t try and stop me. You shoot, you’re going to be one massive bee sting.”

Emily held up a hand. “She’s not going to shoot you—”

“It’s just foam,” the officer muttered, lowering her weapon.

“You’re _not_ going to shoot her.”

“Taylor— Taylor!” Diane grabbed Taylor’s arm. “Look! You can’t just—”

The IV dangled; Taylor reached—

“At least let a nurse—”

“So you can call backup and stop me?” Taylor said.

“You cannot honestly believe—”

“What _should_ I believe?” Taylor shouted. “Go on, tell me.”

She yanked the IV out, and blood poured from the vein.

Taylor’s face remained unnaturally, robotically still, even as the buzz of insects punched past the loud hospital noise. A small puddle of red flowed in tiny ripples across the floor; Diane reached for Taylor’s arm as if to staunch the flow, but Taylor shoved past.

A cacophony of shouts clattered against each other— Emily, Diane, the PRT officer. A call for a nurse; “No, Taylor—”

She eyed her backpack as she passed the foot of her bed; reached the en-suite bathroom; grabbed paper towels—

“That’s not sterile—” Emily objected, but Taylor had already placed them on her arm.

Her bloody hand hefted the backpack over her gowned shoulder. One last look—

“Don’t follow me.”

“Wait!” Diane stepped in front of Taylor, arms outstretched; one hand held gauze and tape; the other disinfecting wipes. Behind her, a cabinet door lay open. “Taylor.”

A pause—

Taylor offered the half-open backpack. Diane nestled the supplies within the folds of Taylor’s costume, her hands quick and gentle.

The door closer hissed.

Taylor was gone.

* * *

Tires approached, scraping on the loose asphalt pavement as if it were fine-grained gravel. A single lamp lit the tiny security booth and the nondescript white truck that had pulled up alongside, but hardly an inch more.

Backlit against the lone lamp, protectively nestled within the shadow a few feet from the road, crouched two figures.

“Come on,” Victoria hissed.

“Next one.” Rachel pulled Victoria back. Victoria huffed.

“Can’t we just fly in?”

Rachel shook her head, and the sliver of light that graced her face seemed to scan from one side to the other.

“The lights,” Rachel said.

“It’s just for—”

“Was my job,” Rachel said. “Watch the sky. Be muscle if needed.”

“Your— You mean, with the Undersiders?”

“Sometimes. More afraid of capes than cops,” Rachel said. She looked to Victoria, eyebrow raised. “Capes don’t like the front door.”

Victoria sighed, and glanced towards ManTech’s chain-link fence; it, too, was lit by bright white lights. Then back to the guard station with its one dim light.

“Point taken,” she said. “Fine. Next one.”

Hardly a moment later, Rachel nudged Victoria and pointed down the street.

“Come on,” she whispered.

As the truck stopped at the gate, Rachel and Victoria crept around. Then, as soon as they were behind it, Victoria grabbed Rachel and jumped into the air.

A moment later, they touched gently down upon the truck’s roof.

“Hope _all_ the lights point up,” Victoria muttered. She pulled her white cape over Rachel; in the dim light, they could hardly be seen against the white truck.

“It’s a single-story building,” Rachel said. “We’ll be fine.”

The truck pulled through the checkpoint. It drove down the poorly-paved road and towards the ManTech complex, until finally, it turned into a driveway.

The whine of an aging industrial garage door, barely functional, and then—

* * *

The rumble of the garage door stopped, and Emily Piggot’s yellow El Camino pulled in with jerky, unpracticed motions.

“Just here,” Diane said, brusque, and Emily brought the car to a stop.

Without another word, Diane stepped from the car. She shoved her keys into her pocket, only to reach the door and require them once more.

She dug. Found the keys. Shoved them in the lock. Fumbled angrily.

Finally, the door opened. She stepped in.

“Diane…”

“Yes?”

“I— You’re upset.” Emily followed Diane through the laundry room—floor covered in clothing—and into the kitchen.

“Why should I be upset?”

“It’s not exactly subtle, Diane,” Emily said.

Diane put the kettle on the stove. Emily stood by the island. Her hands fidgeted with one another as she focused on Diane.

“Do you just not see it?” Diane asked.

“See what?”

“Things escalated.” Diane pulled a mug from a hook over the counter. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled a second.

“I— Should I have done something different, or…”

“You could have gotten rid of that trigger-happy excuse for an officer, as a start,” Diane said.

“Someone just tried to blow up Taylor—”

“Oh, we think it _was_ meant for her, now?” Diane snatched the box of teabags from the drawer beside the range; fumbled with the lid; extracted two teabags. The kettle had begun to hiss, but hadn’t quite worked up to a whistle.

“Things _could_ have gone better,” Emily said. “Although…”

“Although?”

Emily’s eyes met Diane, and she smiled.

“You apologized,” Emily said. “That’s something.”

“I’ve apologized before,” Diane said. She stepped around the island.

“You’ve apologized like _that_?” Emily said, walking to meet Diane. “The sincerity— I don’t know if I can even _do_ that. I compartmentalize so much that— Just… I couldn’t help but… look up to you, I suppose.”

Diane laughed softly, and a smile tugged at her lips.

“I don’t know… You seem sincere enough,” Diane said. She reached Emily, who was easily a foot shorter. A step forwards—Emily leaned against the island—and Diane continued. “You paced again. Step, step, step until you figure things out.”

“Well,” Emily said, the corner of her lip pulling upwards as she looked up at Diane. “My trigger-happy excuses for officers aren’t going to do it, are they?”

“It was nice. Watching you work. Watching you think.”

“It’s hardly _that_ impressive.” Emily pulled away slightly. “I didn’t make any useful leaps, or figure out where she’s gone.”

“But you _did_ something.”

Diane rested a finger gently upon Emily’s chin, and pulled her gaze back.

She leaned in, though it seemed to take her back some small difficulty; Emily craned her neck upwards… Their lips met…

A moment…

But—

Emily jerked away. Diane blinked, but—

“The Docks!” Emily said. “She wanted to see his files. She’ll have gone to the Docks.”

Diane blinked again. Then, she smiled.

“A ‘useful leap.’” Diane’s bones popped as she straightened.

Her fingers gripped the drawer’s handle. Opened it. Stuffed the two teabags back in, missing their box entirely.

Then, finally—

* * *

The drawer shut with a clang, and the files and folders within rattled.

“Rachel, I’m sorry.” Taylor’s shoulder held the phone to her spider-silk-covered ear; her hands held the folder she’d removed from the cabinet. “Call me back? Please?”

Taylor transferred the folder from right hand to left and propped it open with her thumb. With her other hand, she hung up the phone.

She lit her phone’s flashlight. A few spare rays illuminated the small office’s ugly beige walls and the remains of a potted plant; the rest lit the pages in the folder:

“Account #1527: MANTECH.”

Shipments. Equipment from overseas, chemicals by rail. Directly Responsible Individual: Danny Hebert. Destination: Warehouse 7.

The folder slapped shut.

* * *

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

They’d changed from one a second to one every three, steadily slowing each time the kaleidoscopic portal landed on the Apathy-covered hall. Each time, clumps of dark grime spluttered out of the other world and filled Winslow’s unfinished wing with ever more of the substance.

Emma approached the portal, but Madison yanked her back by the scarf. A moment’s hesitation, then Madison pulled the scarf off Emma altogether, and flung one end into the shimmering, shifting orb.

The end missed the infested hall by a half-second, stretching instead into an office lined with bookshelves. It rolled across the floor and—

It was gone. The office had disappeared, and with it, so too had half the scarf, sliced clean through by the portal’s ever-shifting edges. Madison pulled away what was left; its fraying end swayed from side to side as the three stared…

Sophia’s painted nails scratched at the back of her neck, then froze.

“That stuff… it has to be cape, right?” she said. “If the portal catches on it… If I…”

Sophia took the scarf from Madison. Weighed it. Considered it. She reached for the portal—

“Don’t!” Emma said.

But Sophia had already turned to shadow, and with her, so too had the scarf. A flick of a wrist and an end shot into the portal, and then—

Eerie silence replaced the portal’s staticky hum.

The shifting had ground to a halt upon one of the foggy gray realms. The ghostly scarf held it open, half inside, half out.

Sophia shifted back.

The scarf did not.

A harsh, grating sound pierced the eerie silence, alien, but with the quality of grinding gears. The portal pulsed and shook, but the scarf did not budge.

“You can’t usually—” Emma said.

“Don’t look at me,” Sophia said. “It should’ve turned back.”

“Well, at least it stopped that… _stuff_ from coming in,” Emma said.

“Um…” Madison said. She pointed towards the portal, and the gray realm inside.

Inky tendrils branched and twisted across the gray realm’s floor like a network of roots. Every second, each pulsed; waves flowed back towards a distant source.

“Where’s it going?” Emma asked.

“Let’s find out,” Sophia said.

And before Emma or Madison could stop her, she stepped into the gray realm.

* * *

The last pallet was taken away: a wooden base with a heap of brown boxes stacked on top, plastic wrap wound around it all to keep everything in place. Few words were exchanged. Outside the garage, two sets of shoes set softly down onto the ground with hardly a sound.

Victoria and Rachel hugged the wall and waited, eerily still, barely allowing themselves the luxury of breath. The truck’s rear door fell shut with a rumble, and a few seconds later, the engine started.

The rickety garage door began to shut; it whined an awful screech the whole way down. Rachel peeked in— All clear. She gestured for Victoria to follow, and with a quick hop, deftly dodged the ankle-level laser that would stop the door closing.

Inside was a dark room full of pallets, each stacked high with brown boxes. In the corner, half a double-door pair stood cracked open by a brick; through it streamed a cool, white light.

They crept towards the door. Peeked through the gap.

Gently, Victoria eased it open, and Rachel stepped inside.

Unpainted drywall. Cement floors. Fluorescent tube lights. The wide hall terminated five yards away, another set of double doors on either side.

Rachel and Victoria moved slowly down the hall; Rachel’s footsteps were as soft as she could make them; Victoria didn’t bother with footsteps at all. Every few seconds, Rachel checked behind them. The hall remained clear.

Another brick propped open the doors to the left. Rachel pressed her ear just beside the gap, but even at a distance the humming, staticky noise inside was easily heard.

She peered through the opening. A nod. A gesture. Then, she quietly pulled the door open just enough, barely more than a foot, until she and Victoria could each squeeze in.

As soon as they were inside, Victoria pulled Rachel behind a pallet and into shadow. Over the staticky hum of machinery, a woman spoke, smooth voice icy and determined:

“—why the doors stabilized. You could lose your way back _at any point_. They could destabilize at any point. We will be watching the machine, but chances are, if the doors do destabilize, we won’t know until it’s too late. This mission is dangerous.

“That does _not_ give you license to use the rods unless _absolutely_ necessary. Same goes for the pieces of Eden. Do _not_ lose them, and if you see a teammate’s piece begin to destabilize, contain it _immediately._

“A stray shot into _His_ realm is all it would take. Everything you know and love, gone in an instant. We are counting on you, but we can _not_ reveal our existence to _Him_. Am I understood?”

Rachel peeked around the pile of boxes. A dozen PRT officers stood in formation. Each wore oversized backpacks, a glowing blue sphere at the center of each. A cable led from the packs to objects the officers held like guns, with long metallic barrels lined by copper coils and strange shapes at their ends.

Beyond the officers lay a kaleidoscopic pattern of windows into other worlds. Some glowed blue, more shone gold, and at the center, large enough to easily step through, a world half gray, and half dark, inky grime.

“Two squads. Group A, head west, find the Docks. We believe she went missing near Warehouse 7. I _cannot_ overstate her importance. Find her.

“Group B, follow the waves. See if you can’t find the source of the grime.

“Good luck. Go.”

The officers stepped through the portal—their eyes carefully tracked the portal’s edges—and as they left, they revealed a figure dressed in black with accents of gray, the symbol of a tower on her chest. She stood tall, her cape nearly touching the ground although her feet were a foot from, her fists balled at her sides.

Rachel pulled her head back and turned to Victoria.

“Alexandria,” she whispered.

* * *

The nondescript white truck rolled away from Warehouse 7’s loading dock and off towards the ManTech facility little over a mile away. Behind it, the garage door closed. Before it could shut completely, a hand waved in front of the safety beam, and the door began to reverse.

Taylor heaved herself up the ladder inlaid into the loading dock’s concrete wall. She reached the warehouse floor, then collapsed.

Her breaths came in heavy gasps for a minute or two; finally, she climbed to her feet.

Taylor didn’t stop to glance around and get her bearings. Instead, she walked down a row of pallets stacked three high, her back held straight, her movements sure.

She stopped.

Behind her, outside the open garage door, a car headlight shone. It pulled into the docking bay; the engine reached a crescendo; then, quiet—

One thump, then another: two doors closed. Somewhere distant, Taylor’s footsteps hurried away down the row of pallets and around a corner, but it was hard to hear them under the sounds of the two who’d just arrived.

Feet scraped against cement; a head peered above the loading dock, then another—

“Don’t see her,” Diane said. Her bones creaked as she climbed into the warehouse.

“They wouldn’t just leave the door open,” Emily said. She pulled herself onto the ledge so she sat upon it, then swung her legs around and stood.

“What are we _doing,_ ” Diane whispered. “This is—”

“ _You_ said not to spook her,” Emily said. “Shh… Do you hear that?”

She gestured Diane to follow her down the row and around the corner, and then—

Taylor stood near the corner, dressed as Recluse, silhouetted against the gray realm. The portal was large enough to step through, and nestled within dozens more arranged like honeycomb.

She looked over her shoulder at Diane and Emily; her goggles glowed yellow beneath the fluorescent lights. Then—

Taylor stepped into the gray.

* * *

Echoes occupied the gray space: echoes of walls, complete and incomplete, lined with lockers and entirely devoid, each overlaid upon each other in ghostly forms.

The world they left stood in a sphere behind them. Around them stood dozens more semi-spherical shapes in which laid still more worlds. Sometimes, as the three girls moved, the worlds through the portals seemed to shift…

“How does this place _exist?_ How is there _oxygen_?”

“ _What_ is it?”

“Cape. It has to be. It’s a little like when I phase, but more… Uh, I dunno. Something.” Sophia swung her backpack off her shoulder and dug in it, searching for— “There we are…”

She pulled out a few bundles of thin, light rope a hundred feet long; she stuffed all but one back, and tossed one end back into their reality.

“It’s Danny,” Emma said. “His power must be letting us see the spaces between realities or something.”

“Yeah! It’s like the realities have gotten too close to each other, like they’re overlapping, and that’s how we see… this,” Madison said. “And like, this is the space in between, or something.”

“Wherever we are,” Sophia said, shaking her head, “it’s not _real._ ”

“Doesn’t need to be, if powers are involved,” Emma said. “It could be a projection, or a pocket dimension, or a—”

“He _doesn’t_ have a power, Em.”

Emma sighed. “I know. But, I just— If he did…”

“He might be alive, anyway,” Sophia said. Emma shrugged.

“Come on,” Madison said. “The waves?”

She pointed to the ground. It had the vague texture of a thousand concrete floors overlaid upon each other. Along it lay a trail of Apathy: it wove and wound, thick in some spots, entirely missing in others, and upon the floor it left strange patterns.

Sophia let the rope trail behind them as they followed the trail past a portal into a Winslow teacher’s office, another into an empty locker room, and one into another gray space.

Ahead, the gold light shone from _somewhere_ , bright as sun, and somewhere beyond, a trace of blue—

Sophia yelled a warning a moment too late: Madison shrieked as her foot failed to find ground. She began to topple—she was too big for the portal; its edge would slice her clean through—but before she could fall more than a foot, Sophia grabbed her.

“How did you see it?” Madison asked. “I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at all.”

“Don’t you feel it?”

“Feel it?” Emma asked.

“It feels… I’ve felt it before,” Sophia said. “It’s this pulling, itching… When, uh… When Scion visited Brockton. I think all the capes did. Miss Militia said it was his blessing.”

The three peered over the rim, shrouded in the gray of hundreds of floors each at slightly different heights.

Inside was a cavern stretching to infinity in all directions, its walls composed of a lattice of portals like uneven honeycomb, mismatched as if two kaleidoscopes had collided, one clumsy, one elegant.

In the cavern’s center sat a writhing mass of golden light made up of billions of incongruent pieces held together by some unfathomable force. Occasionally tendrils would snake through one portal or another—always through the rougher, clumsy shapes.

Madison pulled three pens from her backpack, each in various stages of disrepair, their ends chewed and mangled.

She tossed one into the portal. It fell; landed on the writhing gold surface; then as one of the creature’s mismatched golden parts flung out, the pen shot into a portal a little ways down, through which they saw—

“That’s Portland.” Madison pointed through a large cluster of ragged shapes particularly near them.

“How—”

“The architecture.”

“We don’t even see the needle thingy.”

“The Space Needle isn’t even _in_ Portland, Sophia.”

The portals to Portland moved in dizzying formation. Occasionally, a flash of people in costumes—

“There are other capes, and… Is it… Is this thing actually… actually…”

“Scion,” Madison whispered. “Flying around, gold, gives you that feeling…”

“The lights!” Sophia exclaimed. “The lights at the jail. They were from a portal, weren’t they? Gold light from Scion.”

“But if he’s gold,” Emma asked, “what’s the blue?”

“Blue?”

Emma pointed towards another portal a ways off; it gave off light a brilliant blue. The trio approached—

Madison squinted. “It’s so much further. It’s like the gold one—like Scion—but… but there’s something wrong with it,” Madison said. “It’s not moving. None of those wispy flare thingies.”

“But it glows,” Sophia said. “Wouldn’t it need to be alive to glow?”

“Well, have you seen a blue Scion recently?”

“I mean,” Sophia said, “it could be on another world. Couldn’t it?”

Madison shrugged.

But the creature, hundreds of miles away though it was, still looked dead: eerily still, stagnant. A planet-sized glowing blue blob.

The three stared out from the portal: three figures lit by blue light against a gray backdrop, one portal in latticework of thousands, millions, more.

As if in dance the portals continuously shifted and twisted around each other. The portals that remained fixed—the trio’s portal and others here and there, many leading to the gray realms—they flexed and folded, shimmered and shone; immense, infinite.

The further the portals stretched, the further they departed from the dead creature, until, a thousand or two miles away, the creature was a hundred miles down.

And from a portal those thousands of miles away dangled a cable a hundred miles long. At the cable’s root hung a cart made of sturdy metal.

Heavy boots stepped inside.

The cart descended.

* * *

Rachel beckoned Victoria closer to the kaleidoscopic portal, outside which Alexandria stood watch. They stepped lightly around the room until they were on its other side, standing beside the loudly-humming machine.

A slab lay suspended in a torus; it resembled an MRI machine, but of all the things it could be, an MRI was the least probable: the room was filled with too much bare metal that any functioning MRI would have destroyed itself immediately.

Instead, the torus seemed to consist of the same cannons the PRT officers had held, but all aimed at a subject—a _person_. Each of the cannons fired constant streams of wispy iridescence; they converged around the figure’s head, then shot at the portal— _powered_ the portal.

Rachel crept closer, Victoria just behind her. They stayed hidden behind the machine’s workings until the slab was close enough that they could see—

Victoria gasped softly, the noise all but lost beneath the machine’s loud hum. On the slab, the focus for the reality-twisting beam, lay a tall man with thinning dark hair:

Danny Hebert.

* * *

Gray surrounded Emily and Diane in shadowy wisps as they entered the portal and followed the trail of footsteps Taylor had left through the inky tendrils of the Apathy within. They stretched on for another dozen feet, then rounded a gray wall that was indistinguishable from any other gray in the in-between realm.

Around the corner they came to a sudden stop.

Taylor stood before another portal, through which lay an empty warehouse caked in Apathy. And at Taylor’s feet, mangled, half inside the portal and half out, lay a woman dressed in a suit.

Emily stepped forward cautiously. The ground was coated by Apathy and insects alike, each in strange tangled patterns that made little sense. Empty spots surrounded certain portals, yet not others.

A half-dozen sets of footsteps approached.

“We found her,” someone said from the other side of the dead woman’s portal.

Three PRT officers stepped through, weapons drawn. But like Diane, Taylor, and Emily, they could hardly tear their gaze away from the woman.

The Apathy had consumed her; it had withered away her skin, had stretched it taut across her bones. But in those strange spots where bugs and Apathy alike seemed unable to reach, the skin had remained unblemished.

Beside the woman, half-dissolved in the Apathy, lay a fedora.

* * *

“Here,” Madison said.

She’d found a portal through which lay the hall lined with lockers. Apathy flowed in clumpy waves towards a source that couldn’t be more than mere yards down the hall…

Madison stepped through.

“It’s Winslow,” she said. “The unfinished wing. It’s finished!”

“Where’s the gunk coming from?” Sophia asked. Her eyes followed the waves down the hall.

Emma stepped past them; her eyes looked from floor to ceiling, then across the lumpy shapes lining the hall.

Sophia stepped up to one of the lumps, only to jerk back.

It was _human:_ a human body consumed by the Apathy, its skin stretched tight over bone and half-dissolved, bugs poking at what little flesh remained.

Again Sophia looked at it, visibly fighting a wave of nausea. The face…

“This…”

Her eyes fell to a spot just beside the figure, where a backpack lay, half of it sheared off. Whatever had taken the other half had gouged the floor and wall beside it, the Apathy had seeped into the cavity. Inside the backpack ants picked at shriveled remains of what might once have been fruit.

“The portals must have come through here,” Sophia said. “Clean through the floors…”

“Just like the scarf,” Madison said.

Sophia crouched. The bag was familiar… She twitched as if to reach for it. It was almost identical to—

“It’s…” she said, voice dazed. “This is me. And the bag… The flashlight’s missing.”

Sophia shook herself. Stood. Her eyes lingered on the bugs, then tore away to Emma and Madison a few feet away; they stood transfixed by another lump of a body.

“Who?” Sophia asked.

Neither girl answered. Instead, Emma only pointed.

Sophia followed her hand to where the Apathy converged. There at its center sat another figure. She was easily recognizable. Healthier than any other in the hall. And beside her, clutched in her hand—

“Fuck with it…” Sophia said.

“What?” Emma asked, voice distant; she did not draw her gaze away from the figure on the ground.

Footsteps approached, but they didn’t seem to matter. Sophia answered.

“It’s… You told me to fuck with it. She must have triggered… Must have…”

Six PRT officers surrounded them as they huddled around the body, but they hardly noticed.

At the heart of the Apathy, leaned against the wall, head tilted to the side, lay Taylor.

In her hands lay clutched a mangled, dirtied flute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Juff, moode, and Fwee for helping beta (not just this chapter, but the whole story).


	6. Convergence

Shriveled leaves clung to their branches; they rustled as a heavy drawer shut, but they did not fall. The small plant sat beneath the shade of the filing cabinet; it cast soft swooping shadows beneath the dim light of the room’s single bulb.

“Berlin,” a solid, hearty voice said. “Arrived here last night; should’ve left there days ago…”

Another drawer pulled open; fingers crawled through files; papers shuffled—

“Are you sure? Well, how about the, uh… Hold on, just a second… Ah, uh, the Olympic?” the voice asked. “From Italy? You have to have _some_ record of it. It should have been carrying equipment; medical, supposedly… I see… Right. Well, thank you for your—” A pause; a click of a tongue— “time.”

Danny Hebert frowned. He scanned around the room—plant, cabinet, chair—then down to the desk.

Five blue folders sat open on his desk. He arranged them so he could see a file in each; ran his finger down the one in the middle; checked the others—

One, then another, then another again, each shipment ending up in the same place:

_Warehouse 7._

The sound of a page being pulled from a folder—

* * *

_Warehouse 7._

The sign over the warehouse’s side door had begun to peel away from the metal siding; it curled up flimsily at the bottom.

Beneath the sign sat a small door with a lock box. Danny didn’t bother with the box; instead he pulled a key from his large keyring, and with a turn, the door opened. The loose sheet of paper in his other hand fluttered as he stepped inside.

Fluorescent lighting, one of four tubes lit; cardboard boxes piled high; pallets arranged in rows; slips of paper on each box’s side.

Danny approached a pallet. Checked a label. Cross-referenced with the sheet in his hand.

No. On to the next, a few pallets down. Another cross-reference. Another no. Then on. Again, again, next row, and again.

Finally: a pallet near the middle of the third row. Cross-reference… Danny blinked.

His multitool’s knife made short work of the plastic wrap holding the boxes in place, then punctured still deeper…

He pulled away the rest with his hands, then wrestled out the rugged case inside. As soon as it was free, he let it fall to the ground with a thud thud.

Danny fiddled with the latch. Pried it open—

A device encased in foam: copper wire wound around a metallic tube, an odd shape at its end like a spherical aluminum can had been depressurized.

“Medical my ass,” Danny muttered. “Fucking Tinkers.”

Another glance at the sheet, then again he was off, strange tube still in hand. Round the corner and past five more rows of pallets, and then, as he glanced down a row—

Boxes. Opened boxes, just a few feet into the row. And across a pallet something lay haphazardly: it had two straps like a backpack, but was too large for one; instead, it more closely resembled the pack astronauts wore on the moon.

Danny peered into the opened boxes. One held more of the strange tubes, a handful missing. Another held more of the large packs. And one… A bright blue glow bounced around the box’s interior. Inside lay a set of glowing blue spheres. There might have been two dozen, once, judging by the casing; now, at least eight were missing, and one—

One rested in the center of the spare pack that lay across the boxes stacked high. Danny reached for it, hand moving first for the strap, then instead for the glowing blue sphere, and then, finally—

The strange tube, just like the one he held in his opposite hand; it was connected to the pack by a long cable. Before he could think twice he wrapped his fingers around the spot where tube met cable; his pinky pulled on a trigger—

A sound: a zap like lightning; a dangerous, electric hum. The copper rod shook; Danny released it, and it flung itself around like a loose garden hose, spraying _something_ through the air: a series of interconnected crystals cut from spheres; miniature portals, through which lay buildings and fields, shining light both gold and blue, and the gray realm.

The shimmering light struck a crate. Glowing blue spheres spilled out; the light struck them—

An explosion of light accompanied by a screeching cacophony. The portals multiplied and grew. Danny ducked away; shielded his eyes from the brilliant kaleidoscope—

And then, to his side, clear at the other end of the long row, he saw her.

Suit. Fedora. Gun.

He barely had time to register her before she ran at him; her body moved with inhuman precision; she raised her gun—

Reflexively Danny stepped back; his feet tangled amongst the boxes; he fell—

His head landed amongst the blue spheres; several crunched into his scalp. He hissed, but pulled himself to his feet. She was nearing at an alarming rate, but he was trapped between her and the system of portals—

Danny turned to the portals and the gray shape that sat at their center, in the shape of an intersection of slowly-converging spheres; through the piece of sphere lay the gray realm; a slick, inky substance coated its ground. A moment’s hesitation, but—

Danny leapt in. The portal shouldn’t have been large enough to fit him, but it swelled as he dove and swallowed him whole.

His hand touched the Apathy as he landed, but still he ran, ran away through the gray realm, and around a gray corner in the distance.

The woman charged after him— she only just fit through before the portal began once more to close.

Her precise footsteps splashed through the inky Apathy. Portals shimmered around her; some cast shadows; others emitted beams of light, blue or gold. She took no notice.

Ahead, the Apathy was littered with strange shapes— blank, null spots like the intersection of many circles. And around them, a system of shimmering air, as if the area was both there and not, and occasionally there flashed a glimpse of black.

The patches dotted the air like portals with soft edges, only just visible. And though she should have seen them, the woman took no notice, and made no attempt to dodge, as if—to her and whatever guided her motions—the null spots simply did not exist.

Her head passed through one unharmed, but as it did—

Her legs gave out beneath her and she toppled over sideways; a brief look of confusion—

Quickly her muscles recovered. She tried to catch herself; her arm shot out—

Her hand touched the Apathy.

A muscle loosened… another…

And she was gone.

  


  


  


  


  


* * *

  


  


  


  


  


# 

Chapter Ⅵ

## 

Convergence

  


  


  


  


  


* * *

  


  


  


  


  


Two pairs of boots splashed in the Apathy; between them, another hovered. They stopped a yard from the body; the Apathy that surrounded it gulped and belched and flowed away in waves towards a far-away source.

Alexandria knelt, knees an inch from the ground.

Her hand reached—

“Ma’am?”

“I’m wearing gloves, Dawson,” she snapped. But she withdrew her hand, anyway.

“No, it’s just— the pieces of Eden,” Dawson said.

“Hm?”

Alexandria frowned. Her eyes traced the empty patches where the Apathy had not encroached; then to her own hand…

“We’ve received another batch from the farm; it should be ready…”

She tugged her glove off her hand. Reached again—

“Ma’am!”

“I’m _not_ going to touch her,” Alexandria snapped.

“You shouldn’t even be _in_ this… Hell,” Dawson muttered.

“Continue.”

“Doctor thinks a few days for processing.”

“Too long.”

“We have a warehouse full of it—”

“We need more. Fast, if the projections are right. Subject 11 is immobile, and therefore useless.”

Alexandria’s hand glided over the body; she paused over one of the null spots; moved her hand side to side until—

“Knife,” she said, and she reached up with her other hand. A moment later, Dawson placed a knife’s hilt within.

Alexandria held her fingers outside the null spot and pricked her index finger with the knife. It didn’t cut.

She moved her hand into the null space. Repeated her experiment.

Blood.

Alexandria exhaled heavily, the breath tinged with sadness, anger, or something complex that lay between.

She stood and handed back the knife. Brushed herself off. Nodded. At that, the two officers double-checked their gloves, then picked up the suited woman.

Alexandria reached down to her belt; grabbed the old-fashioned walkie-talkie attached; pulled the antenna; pressed the button—

“Group B, status?”

* * *

“Group B, status?” Alexandria’s voice emanated rough and staticky from a walkie-talkie hooked upon the belt of Kara. But for her unusual weapons, she was the picture of a PRT officer.

Kara did not answer Alexandria right away. Instead she looked to her colleagues, whose weapons were pointed at Sophia, Emma, and Madison’s heads.

“They came through the portals.” Kara appraised each girl in turn. She stopped on Sophia. “Keep this one.”

Kara reached a gloved hand for her radio as the other officers reached for weapons; her eyes briefly glanced down to orient herself, but in that moment—

A shout; a shadow: Sophia had turned to vapor.

Just as quickly as Sophia had dematerialized, she rematerialized behind the lead officer. A kick at the officer’s legs— she tripped and fell, but her armor saved her from the Apathy.

Sophia kicked at the officer again. Scanned the hallway. Emma, back against the lockers, flinched as an officer withdrew a knife. Madison swung her backpack at the officer approaching her. Another officer pulling a containment foam grenade from his belt. Taylor’s body. The flute. The bugs. The alternate version of herself…

A breath, then Sophia dove at the half-backpack laying on the floor; wrapped her hand in her shirt as she went; grabbed her other self’s knife—tried not to look at her decayed, bug-infested body—then dematerialized and leapt away.

A metallic clank announced a small object; it rolled to where Sophia had just stood. A muffled boom— and then the backpack was coated in a rapidly-hardening foam.

The officers shouted orders to each other, to Sophia, to Madison and Emma; it all blended together.

Sophia appeared behind the lead officer, who was only then climbing back to her feet. A slice at the ankle; a shove; the officer fell once more. The Apathy did the rest.

Sophia dematerialized to the sounds of more shouts. An officer moved to pull his colleague out from Apathy’s grasp, only to scream as Sophia rematerialized with her blade through his calf.

He stumbled as she turned again to vapor. His leg hit the ground. The Apathy leapt at his weakness. He was gone.

Sophia leapt at another officer. He jerked back to escape her as she shifted into shadow; lost his balance; toppled to the floor. His fingers squeezed around his strange weapon’s trigger—

A staticky hiss; a low hum; something glanced through Sophia’s shadowy arm.

She rematerialized, her hand held tight around her bleeding bicep. She knelt and sliced angrily at the man’s ankle a moment before he touched the ground—

“No cannons!” yelled one of the three remaining officers. “Safeties on, safeties on!”

But then she, too, fell, kicked hard by Madison. And then, Madison raised a pen high in the air, a horrid plastic thing, its end chewed. She hesitated; glanced at Sophia, who had stabbed her officer in the leg…

Finally, with all her weight and not a moment before the officer could pull herself to her feet, Madison brought the pen down on the officer’s leg. It pierced just between armored plates; the officer screamed, then suddenly stopped: the puncture had been all the Apathy needed.

Two left. Sophia leapt at one; Madison steeled herself and made for the other.

A soft, muffled boom; a flash of white; the officer was immobilized in foam. Behind her Emma stood, arm outstretched; she stared at her own hand as if it didn’t make sense to her…

Emma shook herself as the last PRT officer screamed. The scream stopped dead, and Madison stood, her breaths heavy and shaky.

The Apathy gurgled softly around its latest victims. Sophia took a deep breath.

“Um… are you okay?” Sophia asked Emma.

Emma nodded, her muscles moving in creaky, jerky motions.

Madison looked over the bodies scattered on the hallway’s floor, inch deep in Apathy that coated every surface, from the floor to the ceiling, the lockers to the window at the end.

“They’re— but they were PRT?”

“Maybe,” Sophia said.

Madison shook her head. “We— we—”

“They were going to kill you,” Sophia said. “Emma, too.”

“But maybe we could have—”

“It’s too late now,” Sophia bit out. “Anyway, I don’t trust them. They aren’t even from our world.”

Madison eyed the body of the officer who’d been the leader. “Unless they took portals, too…”

“They took Danny,” Emma said. “I’m glad _it’s_ got them.”

“She’s Taylor,” Sophia said. “Not _it._ ”

“It’s not like—”

“No. _We_ did this,” Sophia yelled. “Not us, but— but _us._ Everything we did here, we did back in our world. _We_ we. But _here,_ when we fucked with the flute, she turned into this, this _stuff_. This _grime._ It’s her. It’s all her. It’s _us._ So shut the _fuck_ up about her for once!”

“I’m not—”

“When we find your ‘Uncle Danny,’ what exactly do you think’s gonna happen? Do you think he’s gonna save you? Pull you to your feet and pat you on the head, and tell you you’re fine?” Water crashed upon a shore— “ _You,_ the girl who turned his daughter—a version of his daughter—into _that_?” A slamming thud; darkness; a ringing— “You’re not five anymore, _Ems_. Grow the fuck—”

“Shut up!” Madison’s breath shook. She made a fist; released it. “Shut up. Like you said, it’s too late, now.”

Taylor sat unmoving, head still tilted as if listening, though neither she nor the rest of the Apathy had reacted to any sound.

A heavy breath. Another. Madison turned.

“Just… Come on.” Madison’s voice was still unsteady, but she gestured for the other two to follow her and set off down the hall. “Tracks. In the sludge. Let’s see where…” She pointed at the officers. “Where _they_ came from. If they… if they _were_ ours.”

“Okay,” Sophia said. “Okay. Just… give me a moment. Hold the knife?”

Emma reached for it; Sophia hesitated, then handed it over. She then knelt by one of the officers and extricated the large pack and strange weapon from their body; her movements were awkward in an attempt to evade the Apathy. A quick struggle with the straps, then she finally managed to wear both it and her own backpack.

“Ready,” she said.

She avoided Emma’s eyes as Madison led them out the hall and into another. There they found a portal back into the gray realm, or perhaps _a_ gray realm; it was impossible to tell if there were one or many. Sitting astride the portal’s boundary were two ends of a radio transmitter.

“A relay?” Emma quietly suggested. “For their radios.”

Sophia peered into the portal. She took steps around it; assessed it from different angles.

Finally, she swung her backpack off her back, dug inside, and pulled out a strand of rope. A quick turn to shadow, then she flung half the rope into the portal. Just as the scarf had before, the rope remained incorporeal even as she changed back to solid.

One last look into the portal, peering around it as if looking past a corner.

A look back; she met Madison’s eye; still avoided Emma’s—

She stepped through.

* * *

Two PRT officers carried the woman out of the portal. They maneuvered awkwardly through the space and laid the body on top of a metal table.

Past the table was a cheap wall with a door cracked open. From inside two sets of eyes peered out.

“Is it—”

“No,” Victoria said. “No one we know. A woman in a suit.”

Rachel grunted. “Cold,” she said.

“Let me find the switch…”

The pair pulled back, and shut the door behind them. A hand fumbled, then—

Light. On the wall by the door hung a clipboard and a set of numeric stencils; to the door’s other side, a can of white spray paint. Victoria frowned, and looked from one to the other…

Rachel turned. “Should call—”

She stopped as she took in the rest of the narrow room.

Though hardly more than six feet wide, the room was long, perhaps twenty to thirty feet. It was lined with wheeled metal shelving.

Long black bags. White paint. _13\. 18. 21. 27._ Each bag had its own number. Stapled bundles of papers hung from them on hooks.

_Bodies._

A small CRT television sat in the corner. It was paused on a frame of security camera footage: a man in a warehouse, suspended in a perpetual backwards fall.

“Danny,” Rachel said. She approached the monitor. Fiddled with the dial. “Woman was after him. He fell on the sphere things. Did something to him.”

Victoria stepped up to the closest body— _17_ —and gently lifted the bundle of pages attached at the foot.

A ManTech logo header, and—

“Eden-Brain Infusion, Attempt 4,” she read. “Injection site: back of head, 12 needles. Volume: 30ml of Eden Substance.”

“It says seventeen,” Rachel said. “Not four.”

“ _Subject_ 17,” Victoria read. “Eden-Brain Infusion, Attempt 4. I think they were trying to recreate whatever happened to Danny.”

Rachel grabbed another bundle of papers.

“Found,” she read. “Rail yard. Sliced by doors.”

“That must be—”

“What happened to Angelica,” Rachel said. “Yeah.”

Victoria swallowed. She picked up number 17’s bundle again; read—

“Hypothesis: Eden-Brain Infusion unlikely to succeed. Subject 11’s accidental success likely due to compatible half-formed Parahuman brain structures absent in other subjects.”

“Is Subject 11—”

“It has to be Danny,” Victoria said. “Doesn’t it? But his files would be out there…”

Rachel turned to the door. Pressed her ear against it. Gently grabbed the handle and nudged it open— Victoria hurriedly switched off the lights.

It was strangely quiet outside. From across the open space came shouts muffled through walls; nothing close.

Rachel waved Victoria to follow, then crept around the pallets of boxes and to the machine and the platform upon which Danny was strapped.

A clipboard hung at the foot of the platform. Rachel lifted it—

“Let’s go,” Victoria whispered, and pulled Rachel back to the safety of the morgue-like room.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Victoria switched the lights back on and snatched the clipboard from Rachel.

“What’s it say?” Rachel asked.

Victoria shook her head; flipped one page; then another.

“It’s… I mean, it says he can open portals,” Victoria said. “‘Doors,’ they call them. They’ve been trying to control it since they got him, what… three days ago? It— the times logged here…”

Victoria shuffled through a page, then another.

“It’s like they’ve been trying round the clock. They say something about opening doors to unreachable places. Something about his portals being chaotic, and that this is good for… for…”

She blinked.

“I’m not sure _what_ that is. It’s like they want to… to launch him? Like a missile? A bomb? But into what?”

“A portal bomb?” Rachel frowned. “The whole machine?”

“No, look.” She handed the clipboard to Rachel; the pages rustled, and a purple sticky note nearly peeled off.

The diagram was of a man strapped to a platform on magnetized rails, a coil-wrapped rod jutting from his head. A couple inches from him was an ellipse labelled _Door,_ through which was a writhing, unidentifiable mass.

“See?” Victoria said. “It’s like— like it’s just him, and one of those metal rods, strapped to a… a railgun? I guess? _Danny’s_ the portal bomb.”

The purple sticky read: “Catch-22: keep portals open / fire into Golden Man. Require additional subjects. Still pending PoE delivery mechanism.”

“PoE?”

Victoria shuffled through the pages—

“Pieces of Eden, maybe?” She pointed at a diagram of a machine; it seemed to shoot spheres from a massive bin at its rear. “Could they be the glowing blue things? These are spheres, here… It says they want hundreds of these machines…”

“They wanna destroy Scion,” Rachel said. “He’s a Golden Man. They wanna destroy him with Danny and the blue stuff.”

“Millions of Pieces of Eden, I think,” Victoria said.

Rachel shook her head. She handed the clipboard back to Victoria and leaned her back against the door; it creaked even under her light weight.

She massaged her temples. A fly buzzed by her ear. She nearly brushed it away. Instead, her head pivoted to follow its movement. A figure eight, a loop, then it flew into a vent.

“Taylor,” Victoria said.

The name echoed into the vent after the fly and bounced against its metal walls. With each echo the word lost form, until it was a muffled mess without structure traveling down the vent.

The fly bounced off the metal walls here and there. It took a left, then exited out through another vent into a small room.

The room held two folding metal chairs and a cheap folding table. Half of the ManTech logo adorned the rear wall; the other half had peeled off. On one of the chairs sat Diane.

Diane’s wrists were affixed to her chair by plastic zip ties. There were scuff marks around the chair, and one of its rubber feet had popped off.

The fly zipped down until it could buzz by Diane’s ear. Reflexively her head twitched. She started to say something—

But the fly buzzed away. It drew her attention to a mass of ants writing on the floor; were they going to form a shape? A message?

The fly had no answer; instead, it escaped through the vent and to the next room, where Emily sat upon a chair much like Diane, though her hands were not bound—pieces of zip tie lay on the floor by her chair.

She waited patiently with her hands folded on the table before her.

The fly buzzed by her face. Darted to the ground. Emily’s eyes followed to where a group of ants had arranged themselves to spell out a message:

_Office → Portal. No WH17._

The fly flew back into the vent, then down to the next room over, over which a large congregation of insects and spiders amassed.

“Don’t lie,” Alexandria said, inside the room below. “I can always tell.”

“Why would I be there?” Taylor asked. “Like, I was seven or something last time I was there. Warehouse 19; that’s the one with the crane system, right?”

“17.”

“Oh,” Taylor said, though a hint of something—Bitterness? Anger?—crept into her voice. “I thought it was 19.”

“No.” Alexandria leaned forward; propped her elbows on the table and clasped her hands just below her chin. “The Warehouse you went to was Warehouse 17, wasn’t it?”

Taylor shrugged.

“You can stop—”

“Do you have my dad?” Taylor leaned forward in a near-perfect mirror of Alexandria, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed.

“Your _dad?_ ” Alexandria scoffed.

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me, or—”

“Or what? I don’t have to tell you shit. Do you know why, little girl?”

Alexandria leaned in closer; her hands unclasped and dug into the table; the metal creaked as it bent beneath her fingers.

“ _You don’t matter._ You are _nothing._ We are facing stakes larger than you could ever begin to fathom with odds that would send you into a catatonic whimper. We have sacrificed. We have lost friends. We have lost colleagues. We have lost people far more important than you or your father could ever hope to be.

“That woman you found? She was our greatest asset. See, her power was to _win._ Anything she wanted—almost anything—she could make it happen. She shouldn’t be dead. It shouldn’t be _possible._ But your _dad_ couldn’t just take the extra business and buy a new car. No, he got curious.”

Alexandria took a breath. The buzzing of insects had eclipsed the noise of the machine’s staticky hum, but Alexandria was too focused on Taylor herself to notice.

“You being here is a waste of my time. Unfortunately, I have to know what you know. Who you might have told. Because if this gets out— if a _hint_ of this got to the wrong person, it could—”

The room shook, and Alexandria paused. She turned towards the door; listened intently. Muffled shouts, louder even than the buzzing insects, and then—

The door shredded.

Sophia Hess stepped inside.

* * *

“The fly—”

“Could just be a fly,” Rachel said. “Flies like bodies.”

Victoria scrunched her nose and looked distastefully at the nearest body bag.

“It did figure eights,” she said. “That has to be human. Come on… what if she needs help?”

Rachel tilted her head.

“We should get Danny,” she said. “She won’t leave if she knows he’s here.”

“Right,” Victoria said. “Right, okay.”

Rachel pulled her pendant from beneath her coat. Pressed the button. A beep, then the sounds of barking dogs—

“Says three minutes til they’re here,” Rachel said. “You find Taylor. I’ll find—”

Boom! The room shook; the metal racks of bodies rattled.

“You said three minutes,” Victoria grumbled.

“Wasn’t me,” Rachel said. “C’mon.”

* * *

The swarm descended through the vent, squeezing between its slats and into the small room.

Alexandria had already leapt to her feet. She tried to fling herself at Sophia, but was met with a face full of bugs. She powered through— Sophia stumbled back, raised the stolen weapon, fired; the beam shot at Alexandria’s arm—

Squelch, and then: flesh. Ribbons of flesh fell to the ground with a splat. Alexandria screamed.

“Shit!” Sophia shouted. She shook herself. “Come on!”

Taylor waddled with her chair, her hands still attached to its sides.

“Oh for—‘” Sophia began, and she looked set to charge round the table and pick Taylor and the chair clean off the ground.

Before Sophia could do anything so bold, Emma rushed inside. Two quick slices—

“Come on!” Sophia yelled.

Taylor grabbed the knife from Emma and strode through the door and into the wide, unpainted hallway.

Before she could open the next door over, Emily stepped out.

“Let’s get Diane.”

* * *

Rachel reached the hall’s double doors just as Taylor and the rest poured out.

“There are more officers in a building next door; they’re on their way,” Taylor said.

“Right. Come on, come on,” Sophia shepherded them. “We need to— Victoria? How did _you_ —”

“Almost done,” Victoria said. She carefully pulled an IV from Danny’s arm, and slid gauze on in its place.

“Dad?” Taylor said. She made to step forward; Diane’s hand on her shoulder held her back.

Taylor looked from Danny to the crystalline set of portals that hovered midair a few yards away. They shimmered, iridescent, speckled with spots of gray and gold alike.

Victoria propped Danny up. He blinked dazedly, not truly awake, yet not quite under.

“Uncle Danny,” Emma said quietly, reaching a hand towards him. Taylor shoved her away.

A PRT officer rushed into the room from the far side of the portal. Like the others, he had a pack and one of the rods. His finger pulled the trigger—

Danny’s eyes widened.

The crystalline mosaic of portals swelled until the central gray portal was large enough a car could fit through, and with it, the portals that surrounded it like a spider’s eyes grew as well. Their edges sliced through the ceiling and floors; strips of suspended ceiling tile thudded to the ground.

From the officer’s weapon shot a thread of tiny portals like chunks of spheres; they swelled into existence in an iridescent stream that stretched across the room.

But although the officer’s aim had been at Victoria, the swelling crystalline structure caught the beam; some entered the realm of the golden light; the light thrashed and crackled.

The PRT officer froze; his weapon fell from his hand.

“It’s over,” he muttered. “I didn’t— It’s all going to be over…”

“What do you mean?” Emily stepped closer to the man. “What’s going to be over? Officer?” She read from his name tag. “Officer Agathon, answer me!”

“They weren’t supposed to use the rods,” Victoria said. “Not unless ‘absolutely’ necessary, Alexandria said. Because it could enter _his_ realm, whoever _he_ is. Rachel thinks—”

“Scion,” Madison whispered.

“Yeah,” Victoria said. “Scion.”

The officer was still muttering to himself.

Madison approached the system of portals.

“Careful!” Sophia yelled after her. “If you fall, it’ll cut you clean through.”

Madison peered into a portal the size of her head. A few hundred feet inside was a writhing golden mass, surrounded by the honeycomb lattice of a million portals that went to a million places… A cluster not too far away showed fast-moving landscapes and a golden glow—

“He’s moving fast!” Madison said. “He—”

“He will end the world.”

Alexandria had emerged from the hallway. She’d wrapped a piece of fabric tight around what remained of her arm. “Thousands of them,” she continued. “Maybe millions. Every Earth he’s touched will be gone. We could have stopped it, if we’d had just a bit, just a tiny, tiny bit more time. We could have saved _billions_ of lives. _Trillions_. We sacrificed so much, all for nothing, all for _you_ to ruin it, all for you to reveal that we can _hurt_ him.”

She took a deep ragged breath. Clutched her still-bleeding arm.

“He will find the portals. He’ll tear them down. And once he’s satisfied that he’s safe, he will end the world,” she said. “And it’ll be _your_ fault.”

PRT officers swarmed in, weapons drawn.

“I doubt he’ll be fifteen minutes,” Alexandria said. “Officers, the evacuation has begun. Your families are safe. Keep _them_ from fucking _that_ up, too.”

She leapt into the air and punched a hole through the ceiling, and disappeared into the night sky.

The machine’s staticky hum stopped as Victoria disconnected the last cable from Danny. The stream of iridescent shapes fizzled away; the portals remained.

One of the officers made to shoot, but—

Bang!

The door slammed open. A half dozen dogs poured in. With every step they seemed to grow, their skin thickening, their bones lengthening.

By the time Alexandria’s PRT officers had adjusted their aim, the dogs had slammed into them.

Rachel whistled; the dogs halted and lined up. The PRT officers groaned, but didn’t stand. Taylor hoisted up a portal weapon and slung it over her shoulder; she groaned as it pulled over her still-tender skin. Emily grabbed a radio.

“Get on!” Rachel said.

“Where are we going?” Victoria asked.”

“Think! Why did they do all _this_ in Brockton Bay?” Madison asked. “Because Scion is _closer_ in Brockton Bay. His real body, I mean. And he’s even closer…”

“At Winslow,” Sophia said. “The portal we found there couldn’t have been more than a dozen feet away, _maybe_ two.”

“Maybe we can still stop him.”

Emily coughed. “We’re not riding dogs all the way there.”

* * *

The dogs skidded to a stop beside Emily’s El Camino.

“How is _this_ safer?” Madison grumbled, petting one of the dogs’ strange, power-altered skin. “It’s barely two miles.”

“It’ll get us there faster,” Emily said.

They laid Danny in the truck bed, then all six girls piled in themselves. They banged into the sides of the truck bed as Emily pulled away; Taylor gripped her father’s shoulder tightly.

“If Scion’s so powerful,” Emma yelled over the wind, “Why is he coming here? Why not just…”

She mimed an explosion.

Emily made a sharp turn; the tires screeched—

* * *

The car skidded to a stop in the Winslow parking lot. The girls leapt out and rushed towards the building; Taylor held back for a moment to squeeze her father’s hand, then followed the others.

Behind them, Diane and Emily yelled for them to stop.

“We need a plan!” Emily yelled. “You can’t just—”

But her words were lost in the wind rushing by the girls.

“To the right! Right!” Emma yelled. She tore away from the rest and headed towards the unfinished wing and its boarded up windows. Victoria and Rachel had no issue keeping up: Victoria flew, Rachel rode Brutus.

Taylor lagged behind, her breaths heavy. She looked uneasily back to the car, and Diane’s continued calls for them to come back; then again to Emma, Madison, and Sophia, who had found a window whose boards had been pried away. They disappeared into the portal’s shimmering light, and a moment later, so too did Rachel and Victoria.

Another glance at the car, but Emily and Diane were no longer calling after her; instead, they were staring up into the sky.

Taylor followed their gaze.

For an instant—only an instant—she saw Scion: the man crafted from gold. He hovered a hundred feet up; his golden glow grew brighter until his brightness outstripped the full moon’s.

Golden lightning arced from the sky, hundreds of yellow bolts against the sky’s predawn navy blue. As each arc faded, another took its place in a dance of continuous destruction; they blasted Winslow’s unfinished wing apart, leaving only the portal untouched.

The shockwave blew Taylor back—

Black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Juff, moode, and Fwee for helping beta (not just this chapter, but the whole story).


	7. Just a Little Tumble

# 

Chapter Ⅶ

## 

Just a Little Tumble

Scion lit the sky like day in jagged arcs of golden lightning, with cacophonous shockwave after shockwave, one a second or maybe more; new arcs replaced old in a continuous dance of blinding light and deafening bangs.

Only rubble remained beneath the constant arcs of gold, rubble and the spot where the portal still stood unblemished, blanketed with a dusty haze.

Haze, lightning, Scion; Taylor charged towards them all.

“Taylor!”

Diane’s seatbelt buckle refused to dislodge. Yank, pull, press, tug— Emily’s hand graced her shoulder. She stilled.

Through the windshield they could see Taylor dance left and right, evading Scion’s golden light by inches as if she knew where they’d strike. The dusty haze moved with her, always a step ahead— Not dust. _Bugs._

Taylor reached the portal and disappeared inside.

Scion’s lightning stopped.

He hung in the air for several seconds. His form flickered like a bad frame on a VHS tape. His glow grew brighter. The ground shook; the earth rose towards him like a mountain, swelling to swallow the portal, and as the earth rose—

Scion descended.

Then, with a final flicker, he disappeared into the mountain and the portal inside.

“We can’t follow her.”

It took a moment for Diane to separate Emily’s soft voice from the thunder outside the car.

“We need to do _something,_ Emily.”

Emily nodded slowly. She reached over and grabbed Diane’s seatbelt. A twist, then finally Diane was free.

“Get in the back,” Emily said. “Look after Danny. Hold on tight. I’ll drive fast.”

Tires screeched against pavement and kicked more dust into the air. Through the cloud a yellow streetlamp’s light shimmered gold…

* * *

The gold sphere shone against the sea of gray: a portal into Scion’s realm, into the mass of parts mashed messily together that lay barely a dozen feet within. It stretched in all directions to seeming infinity, planet-sized, endless.

A rush of feet light and heavy, then against the gold were silhouetted five girls and a monstrously large dog; their forms were dark but for a sphere’s blue glow inset into an oversized backpack.

From the backpack a cable led to a gun-like weapon: a rod wound with copper coils.

Sophia raised it. Aimed through the portal. Her hands shook.

“That’s Scion?” Victoria peered through the portal.

“Yeah,” Madison said. “We think so, anyway.”

“His light… Rachel, it’s like— it’s like the lights at—”

“Melancholy Thicket,” Rachel said. She leaned over from her perch on Brutus until she could just see through the portal. She frowned. “Like the diagram, too.”

“Alexandria said _He’s_ going to end the world?” Victoria asked.

Emma tugged on Brutus until he backed away from the portal and cleared a path for Sophia’s gun. “We’ll stop Him. Right, Sophia?”

“Then the portals—”

“I think…” Madison muttered. “The machine Alexandria’s people were using—”

Emma sneered. “On Danny.”

“On Danny. Will they still keep the portals open, if…” Madison’s voice lowered. “If we kill Scion?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Victoria asked.

“The blue stuff,” Madison said. “In the spheres. It glows like he does. Maybe it’s from him. And if he goes…”

Emma huffed. “ _Danny_ holds open the portals. We’ll be fine. He won’t let us get trapped.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Rachel shook her head. “Either way, have to stop Him. ’less Alexandria was lying.”

Madison stared at the portal through which Scion’s light angrily thrashed. “I don’t think she was…”

“Okay.” Sophia took a deep breath. “Okay. Madison, Victoria, keep lookout. If you see Scion, we all follow the… the gunk.”

“Apathy,” Rachel said.

“You— huh?”

“The ‘gunk,’” Rachel said. “We call it the Apathy. It’s what it does.”

“She,” Madison muttered. “Call _her_ the Apathy.”

“Her?” Victoria asked.

Madison’s lips pressed together. Emma’s eyes followed it to the portal where it led…

“Fine.” Sophia pulled back the corners of her lips, but couldn’t manage to make it look like a smile. “Yeah. Follow the Apathy. She’ll take us to another Winslow. Alright? Okay… Okay, let’s do this…”

She hefted the weapon up to her shoulder. Aimed through the portal. Her finger shook on the trigger, and then—

Pull.

The beam of deadly portals shot into Scion’s realm; they crossed the dozen feet; hit his body—

He writhed. Golden light shone blinding. The girls shielded their eyes, all except Sophia, who pulled the trigger again. The weapon produced another blast of portals; again Scion writhed, but—

Another pull of the trigger, another blast, another, another, and another, until—

“He’s… he’s the same.”

“No, look,” Madison said. “There’s like… a chunk missing. A big one.”

But the big chunk was little more than a grain of sand upon the earth: vanishingly small, and soon swept up within the waves that rippled through Scion’s body.

“Maybe we need, like, more…” Sophia muttered.

“The other Winslow!” Emma said. “The officers we took down, they all had packs. There’s enough for each of us, I think.”

She shot off and followed the inky trail of Apathy through two portals, until she skidded to a stop in the other Winslow’s hall. A moment later the other four arrived.

“But—” Victoria looked at the bodies the Apathy had half-consumed. She followed the Apathy to its source: the mangled flute; the hand holding it.

“Taylor?” Rachel muttered.

“It’s—” Emma said. “Look, it’s not important. Okay? Come on, let’s—” Emma leaned down to pick up a pack.

A crash; a crunch; a shout—

“Emma!”

Drywall and plaster hit the ground in a roar. A blast of dust; darkness; then, suddenly, light: bright and gold, it shone like sun through what had just been ceiling. Its brilliance lit the hall’s near half in striking silhouette: sharp bright lines along the Apathy’s every ripple.

The force of the crash had thrown Emma to the ground; her arm caught the Apathy-laden floor…

“Shit!”

“I got her!” Victoria flew at Emma, careful not to touch the floor. She grabbed her around the shoulders and heaved. The Apathy gripped Emma’s feet, but with a sharp tug Victoria wrestled her free.

A flash of yellow lightning— a bang— then the spot where Emma had been was scoured down to the foundation.

Scion slammed into the floor; chunks of linoleum-covered cement shot through the air.

Sophia raised the weapon. Aimed. Fired—

He flickered. His face remained neutral, but the air became thick; the hairs on Sophia’s arms stood on end.

She fired again. He flickered again.

Again she made to pull the trigger, but—

Scion pointed at Sophia. A flick of his finger; the weapon exploded with a deafening bang. Sophia flinched back; the air rung.

Again Scion pointed, this time at the remains of the officers on the ground—

A louder bang. They were gone; their weapons lay in scattered debris across the floor, only the glowing blue orbs and a couple radios left intact.

The orbs floated to Scion’s hand. His face betrayed no emotion, but the floor rumbled, and from him heat seemed to ripple.

Dust and rubble fell; Emma’s shoes scraped against the floor’s gravel-like remains; a nearby portal hummed…

Scion examined Sophia.

Brutus growled. Rachel pulled him back by the scruff of his neck.

His hand shot out; grasped her head; held her. Sophia screamed; she turned to shadow, but his golden hands held even her ghostly body fixed.

Victoria slammed into Scion, but bounced off as if he were concrete. She nearly hit the Apathy, but caught herself midair.

“Rod!” Rachel said. She struggled to stop Brutus from charging Scion—

Victoria dove for the weapon dangling from Sophia’s limp hand. Raised it. Pulled the trigger.

Scion flickered, and Sophia stumbled away.

“Come on!” Victoria yelled.

They ran down the hall and into the humming portal, through another and another, past rooms and buildings and gold and blue, another and another and—

* * *

—another and another, and—

Finally, Taylor stopped. Hands on her knees, she gasped for breath. Her entire body shook; she clutched at her side; her injuries were still too fresh for such strain. She tried to breathe deeply, but all she saw was—

Left. Right. All gray, gray but for the line of spherical portals stretching far each way.

Another deep breath.

Taylor turned to a portal—was it the one from which she’d come? A blink, then to another beside it just the same— then another, seemingly identical to the other two.

Her hands shook; her breaths still came ragged. Her eyes scanned each portal more frantic than the last, and soon she was running, running down the row of portals more and more lost, until finally, her face was graced by golden light—

She stopped. Peered into the portal; bit her lip; scratched the back of her neck. Swallowed at the sight of the writhing golden mass and the endless honeycomb portal sea that surrounded it.

As if there’d been a sound, Taylor stilled. Her eyes narrowed, lips tightened; she stilled, and then, as if listening intently, her head tilted to the side…

* * *

Apathy sat against the wall, head tilted to the side. Beneath her, by where the flute lay, bugs crawled along the floor she’d consumed. They inched their way down the hall, leaving Apathy behind, still alone, still against the wall, still her head tilted…

* * *

Danny Hebert lay in the El Camino’s bed, his tilted head cradled in Diane’s arms.

“Hold on to this.” Emily dropped a radio on Danny’s chest. A glance over her shoulder towards the ManTech building— “I’ll find another once I’m inside.”

Diane looked at Emily over the truck bed’s side. She seemed to try to say something… but instead, her wizened hands shot out and grasped Emily behind the head; she pulled her in for a sloppy kiss— it lasted a second; two; then—

“I’ll find them,” Emily said. “I’ll— I’ll find them.”

Diane slowly nodded.

“Be safe,” she said.

Emily disappeared through a doorway lacking a door; the dogs had ripped it clean off its hinges. They could as easily have slammed through the decrepit garage door by its side: the fresh gray paint did little to cover its rusting panels; it had already begun to chip.

The rust, the paint, the door— all seemed to blend together beneath the ManTech building’s weak fluorescent exterior lights; the colors blended together until all that was left was—

* * *

Gray. The occasional portal, but still: gray.

The Apathy’s inky gunk gurgled from a shimmering hole into the other Winslow, but the Apathy did not expand into the gray. Instead, it accumulated in a puddle as if dead.

Another portal stood a dozen gray feet away. Inside was more gray; a hint of movement; and—

Sophia shot out and skidded to a halt; a strange, disturbed look crossed her face.

Next was Victoria; she crashed to the ground as soon as she passed the threshold. A moment later, Brutus passed through, collapsed, and whined.

Sophia swallowed. Surveyed the nothingness around them—the endless sea of gray interrupted by nothing but the occasional portal.

Victoria groaned. “I can’t—”

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “My power’s gone, too.”

Rachel grunted. She pulled a knife from her belt and climbed onto Brutus. She lifted the knife high—

“What are you—” Madison leapt to her feet.

Brutus didn’t whine as the knife entered his skin.

“He’s okay.” Victoria climbed to her feet. “She’s just getting him out.”

From inside Brutus’s thick outer skin came the sound of his scrambling legs and feet; a few moments later, Rachel pulled him from his shell and cradled him in her arms.

The group froze as a gold light shone through a nearby portal.

They held their breaths…

Scion floated past on the portal’s other side. His head scanned left to right; he peered right at them— _past_ them, as if he saw nothing at all…

“Powers don’t exist here,” Madison said. “Maybe he doesn’t, either.”

Sophia crossed her arm and scowled at where Scion had stood. “The portal led here.”

“Powers didn’t make the portal,” Rachel said. “Big machine.”

“They were trying to destroy Scion,” Victoria said. “With a rod, but with Danny as well. He was going to be, like, a portal bomb or something.”

“We’re _not_ using him as a bomb,” Emma said.

“Well, it’s moot,” Victoria said. “We don’t _have_ him.”

“Moot,” Emma muttered.

“Maybe if we were inside Scion,” Madison suggested. “Maybe if we fired the rod from there—”

“He’s, like, the size of a planet,” Sophia said. “You’d need something dramatic—”

“A chain reaction,” Victoria said. “In the video at ManTech— that’s what happened, right? Portals and blue stuff making more portals? Enough blue stuff—”

Sophia frowned. “Would have to be a heck of a lot.”

“We’ve got plenty,” Madison said. “Don’t we? In the blue world?”

“Blue world?” Victoria asked.

“If we can even get to it with Scion patrolling everywhere,” muttered Sophia.

“Can’t move it. Need too much,” Rachel said. “Need Danny. He could make a portal. Chain reaction. Boom.”

Madison lit up. “You mean—”

“Portals would hit the blue stuff,” Victoria muttered. “Opening portals to the—there’s a world full of it?”

Madison nodded rapidly. “And then more portals would hit more blue stuff, and more and more—”

“Boom,” Rachel said. “Need Danny.”

“No.” Emma glared at Madison, Rachel, and Victoria in turn.

“Like I said,” Sophia cut in, “it’s moot.”

“It’s not _moot,_ it’s _wrong_ , and we wouldn’t do it even if we had him—”

“Even to save the world? All the worlds?” Madison demanded. “What do you think _he’d_ want?”

“It’s wrong,” Emma muttered, weakly. “Just… wrong.”

“Being in _here_ is wrong,” Victoria snapped.

“Better than out _there_.” Sophia shivered. “It was like… When he touched me, it was like he was… I don’t know. Searching for something in my mind.”

“For what?”

“What we know about him, maybe,” Sophia suggested. “Or how we hurt him? I kept seeing the blue things…”

“He wants them, maybe? Maybe they were his, or something?”

“It felt like… Like he was looking for where they came from,” Sophia said. “The blue world.”

“Why?”

“If he’s the gold world… Maybe the blue world was like him,” Emma said, “Maybe it was his… friend, or something?”

Sophia shrugged. “I think he just wants to know what we know,” she said. “Before he kills us. Before he kills everything. He’s striking too carefully… unless he’s scared of hitting himself through a portal, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Like, if he can destroy all the worlds in an instant, he could destroy us, too.”

Madison frowned. “If we knew what he was looking for…”

“Well, _I_ can’t read his mind, so unless you have a Thinker handy…”

Madison sighed. “We’re going to starve in here.”

“No.”

“Do _you_ see food, Sophia?”

“We’ll die of dehydration first.”

Emma stabbed the other-Sophia’s knife into the ethereal gray floor. It stuck as if in a pincushion. She pulled it out; felt the spot where it had been; stabbed again.

The Apathy babbled and lapped against the portal’s boundaries. Emma watched its puddle continually sink into the gray.

Victoria leaned her head through the portal, into the other Winslow’s hallway, just by an inch. Again her eyes followed the Apathy to her source. Victoria frowned.

Rachel laid her chin atop Victoria’s head and leaned out with her; just like Victoria, her eyes found Taylor and the flute, and just like Victoria, she frowned.

They jerked their heads back inside just before a golden flash lit the corridor. They scanned over each other—head, shoulders, arms, hands, torso, waist, legs, feet—but both seemed safe enough.

They edged away from the portal. Rachel regarded Emma, eyes narrowed.

“It was her mother’s.” Emma’s voice was quiet. “The flute was her mother’s.”

Rachel took a deep breath; perhaps still in recovery from the near-miss with Scion, or perhaps in preparation to ask:

“What happened to it?”

“Um… We did.”

“Course you did,” Rachel muttered.

“We did the same here—in our, our world—but she didn’t trigger, then.”

“You sure about that?”

“Look, I _know_ okay, I know she’s like, Spider-Man or something—”

“She controls bugs.”

“But she didn’t trigger with the flute, alright? Not then,” Emma said. “Not until we…”

“Stuffed her in a locker?”

“It wasn’t just a locker,” Madison said. A bitter laugh escaped through a tight sneer. “We— we put…”

“Despicable,” Rachel muttered.

“Yeah, well…” Emma looked away, off into the other Winslow. At the boundary stood a spider and an ant. The ant poked at the boundary; took a step through—

Stumbled. Stopped. Walked off through the gray in a direction that seemed random.

The spider took a quick step back.

Emma’s eyes narrowed. But—

“Diane? Diane, come in.” Emily’s voice was quiet and distorted, but still made it in through the open portal from a radio on the other side; it lay ten feet down the other Winslow’s hall…

“Emily!” Diane replied. “Emily? Is this working, I—”

“Diane! Yes, it’s working. Diane, the portal’s here, it must be meters-wide—”

“How are we hearing this?” Emma asked.

“The relays!” Madison said.

Sophia stared through the portal. She stood—

“No,” Victoria said. “It should be me. Forcefield.”

Rachel grabbed Victoria’s hand. She reached for a word, a phrase; instead she only nodded.

Victoria shot into the hall. A half-second later it was lit by golden light; she ducked under its beam; flew as close to the ground as she dared.

Through her cape her hand grabbed the radio. She pulled it from the Apathy; flew back—

“Watch out!”

She spun to the side, and a thin, jagged arc of golden light shot past and singed her hair. Another blast, and another, and then—

Victoria screamed as she tumbled through the portal and into Rachel’s arms.

“Victoria…”

Rachel’s eyes scanned down Victoria’s body: head, shoulders, arms, hands, torso, waist, legs—

Half of her right leg was missing.

“Shit!” Rachel said. “Shit, we have to— Give me, give me something—”

She held her hand out towards Sophia.

“Sophia!” she shouted. “Rope! Something! The bleeding—”

Sophia fumbled for the rope. Her hands shook; her muscles tensed to keep them under control.

Rachel pulled the rope tight around the remains of Victoria’s leg.

“Is that—”

“You’re doing it right, yeah,” Victoria muttered. Her eyes had unfocused. “Think you’re doing it right. Maybe… My sister would know…”

“Your sister’s an ass,” Rachel said. “Come on, come on—”

“Lift the leg, lift the leg!”

“She’ll make me right… in a… in a… a peanut butter,” Victoria said. “Apply pressure, pressure…”

“Pressure’s not going to stop this bleeding,” Sophia said. She paused. “Is it?”

Rachel shrugged helplessly.

“The radio!” Madison yelled.

“She’s bleeding out, Madison, forget about the fucking radio—”

“They can tell us—”

* * *

Emily couldn’t help but look through the portals as she followed the footprints in the Apathy towards where Winslow ought to be. She clutched the radio tightly in her hand.

“Principal Blackwell? Principal—”

Emily jerked at the sudden sound. Her fingers gripped the radio tighter; its plastic creaked.

“Miss Barnes!” Even through the staticky connection, the relief in Diane’s voice was easily heard. “Is that—”

“Glory Girl’s hurt. Her leg— it’s— it’s—”

“Miss Barnes— Miss Barnes, try to—”

Emily quickened her pace. She lifted the radio, pressed the button—

“Emma,” she said, “the best way you can help Glory Girl is to stay as calm as you can, alright?”

“It’s—” she said. “It’s gone. Her leg is gone.”

“Gone?” Diane asked.

“Emma, is it a clean severing, or is it, ah— rough?”

“Rough,” Emma said. “We did a tourniquet—”

“Emma, do you have spare cloth? That would be—”

Diane’s voice crackled through the speaker far too loudly. “Emily, we have to get there _now—_ ”

Emily winced. “I’m going as fast as I can, Diane. I’m not exactly a sprinter—”

* * *

“I don’t know how to go any faster—”

“Fuck this,” Diane said. She hopped out of the bed and climbed into the driver’s seat. The keys were already in the ignition—

Turn— sputter— start!

She wrestled with the manual controls for a moment; her face scrunched up, eyes barely open; she turned the wheel; floored it—

 _Crash!_ She broke through the rusted garage door.

Veer to the right to make the double doors; around the pallets of boxes—the car slammed into some, but they held only the rods and no spheres—then finally—

Diane stopped a few feet from the portal. Bit her lip.

Foot hit pedal; the motor roared; the car shot forward as the portal seemed to swell—

* * *

“We need Danny,” Victoria shouted. She still seemed dazed, but the bleeding mostly seemed to have stopped. “Danny— Get him here, I can wait—”

“No!” Emma yelled. “Don’t—”

“Emma, grow the _fuck_ up!”

“We can think of something else, besides, Victoria—”

“I _said_ I can wait!”

“Stop it,” Madison hissed. “Just _stop_ —”

Emily’s voice carried over. “Are you sure?”

Emma said nothing. But when Madison held out her hand, she gave up the radio; her fingers stretched after it as Madison took it, but she did not grab.

Madison looked over it; found the button; pressed it.

“Yes,” Madison said. “Yeah, we need him. Victoria and Rachel saw it.”

The buzz of insects drew Emma’s attention to the portal. She tried to tug on Madison’s shoulder, but Madison was listening.

“Madison,” she whispered, but—

“Shit,” Emily said. “Diane? Diane, I’m heading back your way. I don’t know how the _hell_ we’ll carry him all this way—”

“Won’t be a problem,” Diane said.

“Come again?”

* * *

“Won’t be a problem,” Diane said. She swerved to follow the footprints only barely visible under the car’s weak headlamps. “I’ve got him. Headed your way.”

“How the— Diane!”

Diane stopped beside Emily, who quickly clambered in.

“Sorry about the damage, but—”

“I don’t care about the damage! Drive!” Emily roared. “I’ll watch the tracks; a right up here—I hope you know this was a brilliant idea, Diane—”

The radios crackled in stereo: “There’s— the bugs— she’s making words…”

“Words? She can hear you?” Emily asked. “Diane, another right, just here, it looks like…”

“She must be able to,” Madison said. “She says— uh…”

“Uh, what?” Emily asked. “Just tell her to stay put—”

Diane followed the Apathy down a ghostly alleyway. It was too narrow for the El Camino; the foggy walls scratched at its mirrors like sandpaper.

“If she can hear them, she can hear us,” Diane said. “Taylor, _stay put_!”

“I wasn’t pressing the button,” Emily said. “Taylor! Taylor, stay put!”

“Stay put!”

Again Madison’s voice came over the radio; the static was lessening; her voice was nearly clear.

“She says…” Madison’s voice shook. “She says: ‘No. I can go in.’”

* * *

“We’re almost there!” Emily’s voice shouted from the radio. “Taylor, we’re almost there, _do not_ go in! What would your father want, Taylor?”

“Taylor,” Diane’s voice followed. “Taylor, please. I’m asking you: stay put!”

Emma approached the portal. The bugs were rearranging themselves, again into words—a phrase—

A wave crashed upon the shore; a seagull cried—

_Just a little tumble._

Emma’s eyes scanned from left to right a dozen times; the words remained unchanged. She swallowed.

“We need to get to the portal,” she said. “ _Now._ ”

Rachel looked up from Victoria. Nodded slowly.

“I can help,” Victoria said. “Once I have my powers, I can still fly…”

“Alright,” Sophia said. “Alright, let’s go.”

* * *

“The portal?” Emily asked. “What portal? There’re portals everywhere.”

Static, then—

“Near the portal to the other Winslow,” Sophia said. “Golden light. You can’t miss us. Probably.”

* * *

Taylor stared into the writhing golden mass dozens of feet below. Her fingers tightened around the rod; the coils of copper creaked.

“Just a little tumble,” she whispered to herself. “Just a little… Love you, dad…”

A deep breath.

She ran.

She leapt.

Her body fell from the portal. She seemed to hang in the air; the golden light shone on her face, reflected off her tears.

Falling—

* * *

“She jumped!” Madison yelled, staring into the portal in the floor that led to Scion’s realm. “She— she’s jumped… oh my God…”

Taylor hit the surface. It roiled around her calves; she pulled the trigger—

A sound like fingernails upon chalkboard; she pulled it again—

Again—

Again, again, again, but hardly any effect: small chunks rendered off an infinity; they sparked portals, but as quick as the portals formed, they were snuffed out as if through their own accord.

“Need to get her,” Rachel said.

“How—”

“I’ll go in.” Victoria hovered, face scrunched up, tourniquet around her mangled leg. “I can fly. It makes sense.”

“No,” Rachel said. “Could be dead spots. You’d fall.”

“Emma, what are you—” Sophia squirmed as Emma struggled with her backpack. “Emma, could you stop it—”

“Got it.” Emma pulled out a length of rope.

She wrapped an end around her waist and tied it into a complicated set of knots.

“Victoria,” she said. “Lower me in.”

Victoria frowned, but—

The sound of an engine; a dim light growing brighter… The El Camino would be there in half a minute—

“Now, Victoria!” Emma yelled.

Victoria grabbed Emma. Hoisted her up. Slowly lowered her down.

“Wait!”

The El Camino had arrived. Emily climbed out.

“Taylor’s down there!” Victoria yelled.

“Shit,” Emily muttered. “Wait, just— just _wait_.”

“No time,” Emma said. “He’ll find her, or find _us_ , we have to move _now_.”

She took a deep breath. Looked down into the portal, down to where Taylor struggled with furious, futile screams. Back up at Diane and Emily.

“Just a little tumble,” she whispered. Again, the sound of water, of ocean, of crashing waves— Emma nodded, face set. “Danny,” she said. “Give me… give me Uncle Danny.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Emily’s lips tightened, but she nodded.

As quick and gentle as they could, Diane, Emily, and Sophia lifted Danny from the car and draped him over Emma’s shoulder.

“Miss Barnes…” Diane said. “Be safe. And bring her back.”

Emma’s head jerked up and down just enough to be a nod.

Victoria lowered her in.

Down, down, down, suspended on the rope. The swirling portals all around showed scenes from hundreds of worlds fantastical, worlds desolate, worlds that were nothing but gray. And beneath the cavern formed from their canopy lay the core of the golden god himself; the golden substance that held him together across the hundreds or thousands of realities in which he resided.

Emma squeezed Danny’s arm; the portals swelled and twisted in response. In one or two, a blue glow…

“Danny? Uncle Danny, can you hear me?” Emma whispered in his ear. The portals swelled and crackled. “I— I’m sorry.”

Danny made a sound; it was not quite a word, but—

“I’ve done so many things… And I haven’t— And now I’m— I’m— I’m practically killing you…”

Another grunt; a move of a muscle; the blue portals grew brighter; the others seemed to dim… Emma stared up at them, and upon her face they left the refracted pattern like light upon a pool’s surface.

“We— The blue ones,” she said. “The ones with glowing blue. That will help. If you can control it, I mean. It’ll make everything— You can spark a chain reaction. Boom.”

Danny’s hand found Emma’s shoulder and squeezed.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Danny…”

Almost there, just a few feet left, just a few feet away from Taylor’s sobbing shouts as she fired the rod in a desperate frenzy…

Taylor fell to her knees on the surface of Scion’s body, head hung, wet face hidden.

A beam of gold light shot from above. It sputtered out only a few feet from Taylor. Emma scanned the cavernous expanse, then spotted him:

_Scion._

His golden glow fought with that of his true body’s core below. A flare of light, then he shot at them. He hardly made it a dozen feet before—

He flickered. Then disappeared altogether.

A second’s pause, then he reappeared, closer, though a few feet to the right of where he’d started.

“Null spots,” Emma muttered. She looked up. Victoria had stopped lowering her, but there could hardly be more than five feet left. Emma tugged on the rope—

Another flicker, and again Scion was closer.

Below, Taylor still sat upon her knees. She stared dazedly up at Scion; fired one last shot; then fell flat on her face.

Her lungs wheezed and struggled to pull in air through the golden mass surrounding her face, but her arms made no effort to lift her.

Emma and Danny touched down on the surface just beside Taylor. Emma stumbled as she tried to lift Taylor, but Danny pulled both down until he could whisper to them—

“I’ll… try to hold open…” His voice was raspy and weak, but at the sound of it, Taylor’s arm jerked. “Love you… Just… a little… tumble…”

Black.

* * *

Black.

A wave crashed upon the shore, its roar loud, terrifying. In the distance, water scraped at the sand, and a seagull cried…

From above, a kind, gentle voice…

“Just a little tumble.” The voice was Danny’s—a healthy Danny’s; a younger Danny’s.

A redheaded girl lay flat in the sand, sun harsh upon her back. Her lungs wheezed, but her arms made no effort to lift her…

Danny knelt down. Grasped the girl’s arm. Pulled her up. “Let’s get you on your feet.”

* * *

“Just a little tumble,” Emma whispered. She grabbed Taylor’s arm. Pulled. “Let’s— Let’s get you on your feet…”

Scion was approaching fast. He ducked beneath one dead spot—a shadow cast by another reality—but then hit another; he tried again, and passed both—

Emma took the weapon from Taylor’s hand, then heaved until she managed to lift Taylor over her shoulder. She knelt by Danny.

“Uncle Danny, I— I love you,” she said. “And Taylor does too… I—”

“Dad…” Taylor whispered. She grabbed for Danny’s hand. Pulled.

“Taylor…”

Taylor fell still at the sight of her father’s face. He wore a half-smile. She could do nothing but meet it with a teary half-smile in return.

“Taylor, let go,” Emma whispered. “Just… let go.”

Finally, a nod. Taylor released her father’s hand—

A blast missed them by inches. It struck Scion’s own body, and though his form flickered, he seemed otherwise unfazed.

Emma looked up to where Victoria waited above. Nodded.

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

She pointed the rod and tried to aim, but the tears flowed too freely; she wiped them and wiped them again. The light surrounding them began to glow blue.

Scion stopped. Though his eyes did not look functional, still he stared up at the blue world opening up around him, seemingly transfixed…

Emma wiped her eyes one last time.

She aimed.

She pulled the trigger.

The cascade of minuscule portals shot at Danny. It struck true.

A bright flash—

“Got you, got you!”

Victoria was careful not to let them touch the Apathy that coated the floor of the gray realm. She pulled them up—

“He said he’d hold them open…” Emma whispered. “But if he’s— if he’s dead—”

Diane helped Emma lay Taylor in the back of the El Camino.

“Let’s go!”

Everyone piled in. Emily slammed on the gas; the tires skidded against the Apathy until they wore through, then—

Through the ghostly alley, through the left turns, then—

“It’s closing, it’s closing!”

It was barely wide enough to fit the car; it shrunk in sputters as if struggling against something which held it open. The car plowed through—

The portal sliced through the El Camino’s side mirrors as it shot into the real world. Emily tore around the pallets and out the garage door until they were free, and they were greeted by dawn’s green sky…

Behind them, back in the complex, the portal finally snapped shut.

All was quiet.

* * *

All was quiet outside Diane Blackwell’s home. The night air had the lightest hint of a breeze: not enough to rustle the parched leaves on the trees that lined the neighborhood road; only enough to let them gently sway from side to side…

The rumble of a car engine approached. The car pulled to a stop along the side of the road, just before the driveway. Turned its tires to the right until they ground against the curb.

A moment.

The driver door’s locking mechanism clunked, and the door popped open. Another few moments, then the person inside gently pushed the door open. Their foot dipped out—

“You’re forgetting something,” Alan Barnes’s voice echoed from within.

There was no answer but the rustle of keys being pulled from a cupholder.

Emma Barnes stepped out from the car. She shut the door, then leaned against it. Took a steadying breath—

“It’ll be alright,” Alan said. “It’ll— it’ll be alright.”

Emma shook her head. Bit her lip.

“We don’t have to—”

“We do.” Though Emma’s voice had been quiet, the night had still been quieter, and Alan had heard.

“It’s— if you’re not ready—”

“I’m not going to _be_ ready,” Emma said. “I just have to _do_ it.”

Alan frowned. But Emma shoved herself off the car door. Another deep breath. A nod.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s… let’s go.”

The two walked up the driveway, past the dry, yellowing lawn and Emily’s El Camino. It shone in the street lights, nearly polished. One of the mirrors had been replaced; the other had been locked inside the vehicle along with a handful of tools.

Emma pulled her eyes away from it and rushed after her father, who had reached the door. He raised his hand to knock—

The door opened.

“Come in,” Emily said. “We just put on the hot cocoa. Madison should be here soon, but Sophia will be a bit late.”

They stepped into the foyer. Emma studied the parquet floor. It had been scuffed and worn beneath the scrapings of a dozen shoes, even though to the right was a cubby for—

“Your shoes.” Emily pointed at the cubby. “If you don’t mind?”

Emily’s own feet were bare, her toes painted the same yellow of her El Camino.

“Of course,” Alan said. “Of course. Good to see you, Emily.”

“You as well, Alan! Everything alright at work? Any interesting cases?”

“In fact, there is…”

Their voices dropped away as Emma stepped into the house proper. She glanced left—maybe a bedroom?—then right, from where rang the clangs of ceramic dishes upon countertop.

“—don’t have to, you know?” Diane’s voice was barely audible. “No one will blame you if you’re not ready yet.”

“I’m never going to be ready,” Taylor muttered. Emma’s eyes shut tight. “I just…”

A pause, then Taylor’s voice spoke again, cold and harsh:

“Having fun eavesdropping, Emma?”

Emma’s face flushed. She found the kitchen and with a shaky breath she stepped inside.

She glanced at Diane—

“Good evening, Miss Barnes.” Diane gave Emma a small nod.

“I wasn’t— I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Emma said.

“Right,” Taylor muttered. “Right.”

Diane’s mouth opened, but she thought better of speaking.

Emma moved towards Taylor where Taylor sat, back to her: one step, another, another— Taylor jerked slightly. Emma stopped.

“I— I don’t know what to say.” Emma’s voice was quiet. “I—”

“Ever thought of saying nothing?”

“Taylor…” Diane said, but her quiet voice made a poor admonition.

“Principal Blackwell is right,” Emma said. “If you don’t want us here, tell us to leave. I will. And I’ll make Sophia and Madison leave, too.”

Taylor scoffed. Shook her head. Sneered.

“You _know_ I don’t want you here.”

“Okay.”

Emma took a deep breath. Nodded. She turned to leave, but—

“Stop.” Taylor’s eyes closed. “Stay. I— I can’t avoid you forever. And Uncle Alan…”

Emma said nothing. Her jaw pulled back tightly; her lips pulled inwards. Her eyes were unsteady…

“Taylor… I— I know I’ve said, but I’d like to say it again…”

“Don’t.”

“I—”

“I don’t need your apologies.”

“I— okay.”

Taylor’s mouth set. She stared at the tears below Emma’s eyes. She tried to sneer, but an ugly grimace ensnared her lips… Her arm twitched—

Taylor looked away.

From over Taylor’s shoulder, Emma nodded.

For a few moments—maybe a minute—the kitchen was quiet. The sounds of conversation trickled in from the other room, muffled and jarring against the somber quiet that had suffused the kitchen.

“Hot chocolate’s ready.” Diane edged her way around the small round table with a tray of mugs in her hand. She raised an eyebrow? “Shall we join the others?”

Taylor nodded, but did not move. Emma hesitated; looked from living room to Taylor and back—

“Hess is here!” Taylor yelled. She still hadn’t turned. “Clements, too!”

“Got it!” Emily yelled back. “Sophia’s early!”

Emma stepped slowly towards Taylor.

“Taylor?”

The chair scraped across the floor as Taylor stood.

Taylor glanced at Emma, then stepped past her.

“C’mon,” Taylor muttered.

In short order, everyone was sat around the living room table, some on the floor, others on chairs.

On the table sat a dizzying array of sheets and books, and aside them all, a set of dice.

Emily waited until everyone had quieted.

“Alright,” she said. “Everyone ready? Got your hot chocolate?”

A pause as she rearranged some sheets.

“Let’s begin.”

The sound of their flowed from the living room and down the hallway to its end, where stood a shut door. Light shone from the crack beneath, a small yellow glow against the hallway’s soft carpet…

Beneath it, through it, stood a room. Messy; pens and paper and homework strewn about; and across from the door, a window.

Through the window, again the night sat nearly silent, the quiet only pierced by the occasional happy shout from inside.

The plants in the garden bed seemed to shiver in the mud around them.

A staticky hum—

A dim, blue light—

The mud moved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Juff and Fwee. I made a bunch of changes thanks to their input.
> 
> It took me way too long to upload this chapter. I had it written, just not edited, and I was afraid of the epilogue scene (I ended up rewriting it today, so this is fresh off the presses, probably has some issues, etc.).
> 
> And I’m sorry for the sequel-bait end, particularly because I don’t think I’m going to write a sequel (though of course you may, should you wish). This story was meant to be a Stranger Things-esque adventure/thriller/mystery/thing, and I think this is the way those sorts of stories generally end.
> 
> I tried to make the story feel like a film; the narrator was the camera, and so couldn’t show (for example) what any of the characters were thinking (and could only imply). I think I cheated once or twice.
> 
> There were a couple questions I think I may have forgotten to tie up. For example, who blew up Taylor’s house? (Alexandria; it was meant for the police as was suggested). I think that this was the most complicated story I’ve tried to tell yet, so thank you for your patience. It’s been a journey.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time in quite awhile writing a whole story before posting it. While I’m still editing as I post, I’m hoping the prewriting helps the whole thing end up a more cohesive story. I plan to post around one chapter a week.
> 
> Thanks to Juff, moode, and Fwee for helping beta (not just this chapter, but the whole story).


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